PASSING by Shortgrove Park and Uttlesford Bridge, the dirty and dismal station of Audley End is noticed, down the left-hand road we take, on the way to discover what manner of place “Wendens Ambo” may be. To the present historian nothing is more attractive than a place with an odd name, and he has gone unconscionable distances out of his way, often to find the most unusual names enshrining the most commonplace towns and villages. But not always. Here, for example, Wendens Ambo is a quaint, old-world place, characteristically Essexian. In the churchyard is a tombstone to William Nicholson, who died, aged 104, in 1886. He had been midshipman on Nelson’s _Vanguard_. There are, or were, it seems, two Wendens—Great and Little. Their name derives from that Anglo-Saxon deity, Woden, who gives us the name of our Wednesday, _i.e._, “Woden’s day.” In 1662 the ruined church of Little Wenden was cleared away and the two parishes united. Great Wenden swallowed Little Wenden, and altered its name to the present Latinised form, thus proclaiming that the present church does for the two: Wendens Ambo meaning, when properly Englished, Both Wendens, and incorrectly written “Wenden’s” in the possessive case, as though the place were Ambo, belonging to some manorial Wenden:—Wenden, his Ambo. [Illustration: WENDENS AMBO.] Audley End Station takes its name from that great palace a mile distant, whose site was given to Lord Chancellor Audley by Henry VIII. in 1538. The Abbey of Walden then stood here; an ancient foundation built, like most monastic establishments, in a pleasant vale, beside a fishful stream. It was a noble piece of spoil, and probably the richest of all the plundered monastic tit-bits that came the artful Chancellor’s way. He was thus a great receiver of stolen property, but put a portion of his gains, at least, to good use, for he founded Magdalene College, Cambridge, as the epitaph on his tomb, in the course of surely one of the most shockingly bad puns in existence, tells us. The founder of “M—audley—n” College lies, indeed, in the beautiful church of Saffron Walden, within sight of Audley End, and there you shall read how— The stroke of Death’s inevitable dart Hath now, alas! of lyfe beraft the hart Of Syr Thomas Audeley, of the Garter Knight, Late Chancellor of England under owr Prince of might Henry Theight, wyrthy high renowne, And made by him Lord Audeley of this towne.