Photographs of Thaxted

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Thaxted appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Tachesteda, Old English for "place where thatch was got." Once a centre of cutlery manufacture, Thaxted went into decline with the rise of Sheffield as a major industrial centre. The British composer Gustav Holst was a long term resident. Sections of his most famous work, The Planets, were inspired by local characters.
Thaxted is a pretty little town (even on a wet weekend in Feburary). It has several interesting buildings including the Guildhall (built by the Cutlers around 1450), the Church of St John (often referred to as the Cathedral of Essex) completed in 1510 and the windmill built in 1804. The thatched almshouses by the Church were built as a Priests' house and the tiled almshouses date from the early 1700s.