Mountnessing was once the seat of the Mounteneys, who have long since vanished from their old home. The old church, largely red brick without and timber within, still preserves the fossil rib-bone of an elephant, long regarded with reverence by the country folk as the rib of a giant, and has for an additional curiosity the carving of a head on one of the pillars, a head fitted, perhaps by way of warning to Early English parishioners of shrewish tendencies, with a brank, or "scold's bridle." The red-brick west front of the church, masking the wooden belfry-frame from the weather, still bears the date, 1653, carved in the brick, but such is the fresh appearance of the brickwork that without that evidence of age it would be difficult to credit it with so long an existence. The iron ties in the shape of the letter S give the view a singular appearance. An apologetic epitaph in verse, beginning, "Reader, excuse the underwritten," is a curiosity of Mountnessing churchyard. [Illustration: MOUNTNESSING WINDMILL.] Returning to the road, Mountnessing Street, as the modern settlement is named, is seen clustering on a hill-top, around four cross-roads and a wayside pond. The place may aptly be summarised as consisting of a dozen cottages, two public-houses, a general "stores" (our grandfathers would have been content with the less pretentious word "shop"), a tin tabernacle to serve those too infirm or too lazy to walk a mile to church; a sweep's shop, a tailor's, and a windmill situated on a knoll; a windmill that for picturesqueness might win the enthusiasm of a Crome or a Constable. From this point it is, as a milestone proclaims, two miles to "Ingatstone," the "Ingatestone" of customary spelling. The milestones are undoubtedly strictly correct in their orthography, if erring on the pedantic side, for that village derives its name from a settlement of the Anglo-Saxons by the "ing" or meadow, at the Roman milestone they found here, but has long since disappeared. "Ing-atte-stone" they called their village, which lies in the little valley of the River Wid, or Ash, trickling (for it is a stream of the smallest) hither and thither to give a perennial verdure to the meads along its course. "Ing" is, by consequence, a marked feature of the place-names successively met with along the River Wid. Mounteney's Ing we have already seen, and Fryerning, or Friars' Meadow, is not far away; while Margaretting, the prettiest name of all, lies beyond Ingatestone. [Illustration: THE GATEHOUSE, INGATESTONE HALL.]