From 1996 until 2017 Writtle hosted the annual southern V Festival within the grounds of Sir John Comyn's Hylands Park.

The estate and village were later a possession of Isabel de Brus (Bruce), via a 16 October 1241 grant of Henry III[9] and a known residence of her grandson Robert, father to the future king.

[10][11] For a time thereafter it was leased to a Francis and Joan Bache, but the estate was taken by Isabel's great-grandson, Robert The Bruce, King of Scots, in the 1320s.

[12][13] It was in Writtle in 1302 that Robert had married his second wife, Elizabeth de Burgh; there is some evidence to suggest he was also born in the village rather than in Turnberry Castle, but the story is possibly conflated with that of his father of the same name.

Baron Petre publicly acknowledged that he was a Roman Catholic and refused to follow the Church of England during the time of Queen Elizabeth I and King James I.

On 14 October 1914 they paraded in the grounds of Hylands House in the presence of King George V. The Ox and Bucks left Writtle in April 1915.

During the medieval period, the church "changed hands" several times, revenues being received by the Prior of Bermondsey in the 12th century, and then by the Hospital of the Holy Ghost in Rome from the early 13th; the turbulent reign of Richard II saw the church being seized by the king, eventually coming under the control of William of Wykeham's New College, Oxford in 1399.

The Forest included hermitage called Bedemansburg, founded by King Stephen in the 1100s, and a Deer Park which was in place some time before 1237.

The estate was acquired by Essex County Council in 1950 and had been the village's community centre until 2020, as it was sold to a development company in 2013 to become residential dwellings.