So it came about that they built great houses there and reared
beautiful abbeys and churches for the welfare of their souls. Amongst
these, not very far from the coast, is that of Monk's Acre, still a
beautiful fane though they be but few that worship there to-day. The
old Abbey house adjacent is now the rectory. It has been greatly
altered, and the outbuildings are shut up or used as granaries and so
forth by arrangement with a neighbouring farmer. Still its grey walls
contain some fine but rather unfurnished chambers, reputed by the
vulgar to be haunted. It was for this reason, so says tradition, that
the son of the original grantee of Monk's Acre Abbey, who bought it
for a small sum from Henry VIII at the Dissolution of the Monasteries,
turned the Abbey house into a rectory and went himself to dwell in
another known as Hawk's Hall, situate on the bank of the little stream
of that name, Hawk's Creek it is called, which finds its way to the
Blackwater.

Parsons, he said, were better fitted to deal with ghosts than laymen,
especially if the said laymen had dispossessed the originals of the
ghosts of their earthly heritage.

The ancient Hawk's Hall, a timber building of the sort common in Essex
as some of its premises still show, has long since disappeared. About
the beginning of the Victorian era a fish-merchant of the name of
Brown, erected on its site a commodious, comfortable, but particularly
hideous mansion of white brick, where he dwelt in affluence in the
midst of the large estate that had once belonged to the monks. An
attempt to corner herrings, or something of the sort, brought this
worthy, or unworthy tradesman to disaster, and the Hall was leased to
a Harwich smack-owner of the name of Blake, a shrewd person, whose
origin was humble. He had one son named John, of whom he was