ANYONE struggling to find an NHS dentist should thank their lucky stars they didn't have toothache in the 1930s. Dental services then were not what we expect more than seven decades on.

ANYONE struggling to find an NHS dentist should thank their lucky stars they didn't have toothache in the 1930s.

Dental services then were not what we expect more than seven decades on. In the village of Castle Hedingham, Dr Jim Bromley was offering to pull troublesome teeth. But there was a catch: an extraction with anaesthetic cost half a crown. You could have it out for just a shilling . . . if you were willing to forego the painkiller. Or simply couldn't find the money - which must have been the unenviable situation facing many patients.

It's enough to make 21st Century softies wince.

“What that illustrates to me is the hardiness of the old folk,” says Castle Hedingham local history recorder Charlie Bird. “They would have teeth extracted without anaesthetic because they were too poor to be able to afford chloroform, which was what they were using in those days.”

This snippet comes from a new book by Essex historian Jane Greatorex that traces the surgeons and apothecaries who have cared for the good people of the village near Halstead. She feels so strongly about recognising their input that she's willingly pumped in her savings to publish the softback volume.

The author lived in Castle Hedingham for more than eight years, and worked in administration at the GPs' practice. People would tell her about doctors from years gone by and a famous homeopath called Dr Blackie, who had been physician to the Queen.

“I was thinking 'Gosh; this hasn't been written about. People do not tend, in a rural environment, to work out who all their surgeons and apothecaries and physicians were, though they were incredible people.”

Some of the older doctors doing locum work would say 'Do you know about so-and-so?' Jane would write it down and put it in a box marked “later”.

It wasn't until a couple of years ago that she had the chance to take a really good look. But, once she did, it was a race against time. She was moving to Wales to be near one of her brothers, and needed to gather as much data and photographic material as she could.

Luckily, fellow history enthusiast Charlie helped. “Charlie really ought to be co-author of this, for his input and moral support,” she says.

Surgeons and Apothecaries of Castle Hedingham, Essex, was written in Montgomeryshire and is the result of a 16-month, flat-out, labour of love. It's Jane's eighth book.

Inevitably, she did have to make research trips from Wales - about eight to Essex and London, and spend days at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. “I stopped counting how many miles I'd travelled when I topped 3,000 last year!”

The book spans 900 years. Details of 16th Century practitioners, for example, are culled from documents such as wills. As we come more up to date, so personal memories add colour.

Take James Bromley, who joined his father John's practice in 1908, living and working there until he died 60 years later.

Dr Jim sported a trademark bowler hat. He used to do his rounds on a Sunbeam motorbike and gained a reputation for being a little accident-prone. Once, his handlebars came apart and he was tossed into a ditch in Broad Street, Braintree.

Another time he came off his motorbike in Great Yeldham, badly hurting a leg. He made a makeshift splint from a branch pulled from a hedge and rode home.

Then there was Dr Jean Boyd, who helped at the practice from 1972-1978. She had come to Essex to assist her doctor cousin at his Braintree practice while he recovered from TB. “She was a little eccentric, extremely kind-hearted and a little forgetful,” writes Jane. “Dr (John) Carter recalls the many pairs of stethoscopes Dr Boyd possessed that she invariably left behind after visiting her patients.”

Dr Margery Blackie, a regular doctor and a homeopath, was from the mid-1940s a regular visitor to the village, and later a resident. She became friends with Lady Jane Lindsay and her great niece, Musette Majendie. Miss Majendie had taken over the running of the Castle Hedingham estate after the death of her mother. Dr Blackie was homeopath to the Queen Mother and, from 1969, physician to the Queen.

Branch surgeries in Great Yeldham aren't ignored. These used to be in a thatched cottage in very narrow Leather Lane; then in a lean-to attached to Elm Villa, near the post office. Unfortunately, it didn't have a toilet. Patients hoped they wouldn't have to wait long to be seen . . .

In 1995 it moved to a converted shop in Bridge Street offering much more extensive facilities - and a loo!

Nine-hundred years earlier, such luxuries would have been the last thing on the minds of sick villagers.

Many poorer people had to rely on the monasteries for stitching, bloodletting and the like.

When Pope Alexander issued an edict in 1163, forbidding clerics from carrying out surgery, it raised the status of barber-surgeons, who had become skilled at assisting with minor operations and had already taken responsibility for some procedures.

Castle Hedingham (formerly hengham ad Castrum) was the seat of the de Vere family, subsequently the earls of Oxford, points out Jane. Evidence suggests that Hugh, the fourth earl of Oxford, founded a hospital there in the middle of the 13th Century.

Meanwhile, in the mid to late medieval period, there was no shortage of folk pushing themselves as practitioners of medicine across England, she writes. Advertising sometimes featured a vase of blood in a window or a notice pasted on the church door, offering remedies to cure plague. Some practitioners dressed gaudily - in purple gowns and flamboyant hats for instance - but this approach was later toned down as part of the campaign to earn respect as a profession.

Then, in the 1500s, the dissolution of monasteries and nunneries was followed by suppression of chantries, guilds, hospitals, colleges and brotherhoods. This, says Jane, “robbed the general populace of a support system that had given a small measure of benevolence, of medical care, handouts of clothing and relief from penury”.

It's in the middle of the 16th Century that she decides to highlight her first named chirugeon, as they were known. The family of George Warde appears in church records from 1563, when George and Margaret's son John was baptised, followed in neat two-year intervals by six other children.

Wills can tell the historian much about a person's life and status. George Warde was buried in the village on September 2, 1584. He'd enjoyed a high standard of living, owning beautiful objects and quality furniture (damask sheets and a “joined” bedstead). He also owned a hopground in Nunnerie Street, and his house had had “chambers” added.

Jane couldn't find out where Warde trained, but suspects it was abroad - perhaps France. The term chirugeon was one used by the older universities. At that time many foreign universities were more advanced in the sphere of medical training than Oxford and Cambridge, which weren't doing as much experimentation with cadavers. Studying in places such as Padua and Paris was popular.

Castle Hedingham was something of a dream location for a surgeon or for an apothecary selling creams, ointments, salves, medicines, lozenges and potions.

It was a borough town, with a market charter and permission for three annual fairs. The influence of the earls of Oxford attracted well-off people. Jane suspects surgeons living elsewhere were tipped off by relatives or acquaintances whenever a vacancy loomed.

At one time the village could boast among its trades and occupations weavers, wool-combers, spinners, cloth merchants, tailors, malsters, brewers, bakers, grocers, blacksmiths, millers, inn-keepers, basket-makers, candle-makers, a surgeon and/or physician, and an apothecary.

The Directory for Essex, 1791, mentions two coaches passing through Castle Hedingham: for Bury St Edmunds and London. By 1832 coaches were going to London, Bury, Cambridge, Colchester, Diss and Scole, Norwich and Sudbury.

Charlie Bird points out that a recurring theme, from the 1300s if not earlier, is the friction between the incoming, wealthy doctor class - there mainly to treat the rich - and people like the old ladies who collected herbs to make poultices.

He suspects some of the doctors were bumping off the opposition! These herbalists - often elderly women living alone - also risked accusations of being witches.

The influence of Henry VIII raised the profile of medical qualifications. Legislation was passed to license medical practitioners, putting control in hands of the Church and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. A licence was required from the bishop - Castle Hedingham at that time being in the bishopric of London.

So why is a historical study important? Why do we need an awareness of history?

“It gives you focus,” says Jane. “You can walk by the houses in Castle Hedingham and say 'John Parmenter, the surgeon, lived there, and John Clerke, the apothecary, lived there.' It's like a huge web or jigsaw - I'm not sure which is the best analogy - but it's so interesting and amazing that you cannot go around with blinkers on.”

It makes life rich, then? “Exactly.”

“To think Elizabeth I came to the castle on at least two occasions; Henry VII came on two if not three occasions, and Henry VIII came at least once. I mean, crikey! They came along some of these lanes that we drive along.

“I think about that every day and it makes me feel so humble - and in awe, really, of what we have around here.”

Surgeons & Apothecaries of Castle Hedingham, Essex (about 80 pages long) is available via the web site www.essex-history.com for £13.99, plus £3 for postage.

HISTORY has pulled Jane Greatorex back to Essex. After 19 months in Montgomeryshire - “beautiful, with red kites and buzzards, but cut off” - she's moving back to the Halstead area.

“There's so much to do, and the next book is waiting in the wings: again, about the earls of Oxford, Castle Hedingham and the priory. Once you've got the bug, you can't get it out of your system.”

She inherited her passion for the past from her mother. They always lived in old houses: “She taught me how to read them like a book.”

Jane moved from London, “in hops and skips”, to Colne Engaine in 1983 - to an old building. The front was Victorian, but she suspected the rear was an old barn. Locals doubted it was anything more special than a Victorian house. But Jane felt there was more to it and began to probe its history.

She discovered the back part had been a wheelwright's shop, standing near a stream.

In 1984 a group of friends decided to form a village history society, and Jane's hobby started to explode.

That initial study led to the first of five little books on aspects of Colne Engaine history; and in 1999 Jane published a history of Coggeshall Abbey.

“What I do is take established work and sources, and say 'OK, let's go back to the beginning, take it all by the throat, get the documentation translated again, and really look again.

“I'm a kind of history detective in that way: I won't accept anything at face value just because someone's written it - because you find inaccuracies and they come down the ages and no-one challenges them until you go back to the original sources.”

She feels strongly that history should be accessible to all.

Get documents translated from Latin or Norman French, and put them in a book, and it brings people and events to life. “Those people and events have been cut off from the general populace because they don't have Latin skills. It was always the clergymen who had Latin and Greek skills and the knowledge to handle these manuscripts when they were still in private libraries.

“What I really like to do is bring people to life and to bring history into everybody's front room - because it belongs to everybody, and I don't think it should be shut away in a university or an archive.”