THE FINALE

 Great Baddow had since its very beginnings been a source of horses for the King, so it is no surprise to find that during the first world war, every piece of land was earmarked for stabling army horses. One also finds engineering works turned over to war work and German prisoners of war who if well behaved were allowed to work on the farms digging those ever-problematic drainage ditches. Even between the wars a lot of local engineering companies prospered through military contracts which was a typical response to a radical shift in technology and the need to adjust to a new way of fighting.

During the second world war Great Baddow once again became a repository of prisoners of war and army barracks. The Americans took over the Brewery Building and German Prisoners took over Baddow House. The Home Guard of about a thousand men would practice shooting at the Beehive Lane quarries and there were anti-tank guns and machine guns kept in Baddow Lodge grounds.

Baddow House, Great Baddow

The wars and the shift to high tec industry created a class of people with new expectations, much in the way old Hugh De Baddewe had had his perspective somewhat altered by his experiences at the siege of Calais and the redundancy of feudal methods of production.
 
The 1930’s saw the abolition of the workhouses, and despite wages being low for most people, little more than ten to thirty shillings a week, life expectancy began to creep up and we begin to find more people are now living into their nineties. Those drains are finally working and doctors are finally washing their hands in disinfectant.
 
With the population exploding, a huge building programme created a lot of new housing estates. Even more were built in the fifties. Then in the 1960’s we saw the end of the Georgian house in the Vines and its replacement with what was billed at the time as the worst piece of urban vandalism ever: the Vineyards shopping precinct and an apartment block.

The Baddow Mast that now adorns the Great Baddow sign is a relic of the 2nd World War. It was part of the network of radar masts guiding the British Bombers that was dismantled, ironically by a team of German contractors, and put up here for use by the Marconi Company. The Great Baddow sign announcing the name of the village has the Mast and the three Seax as its logo, thus top and tailing the history of Great Baddow. In some sense the Mast serves the same iconic status as the spire on St Mary’s church, and denotes a shift away from faith to science as the source of truth and morality.

And suddenly the great garden wall collapsed sending eight foot of water surging through the village. It swept away cars and flooded everywhere up to the Blue Lion. Apparently Major William at Manor Place, nearly had a fist fight with Mr Prike, the owner of Baddow House.

After that, those stiff upper lips that had once ruled the world, were just itching for some silicon fill, and that pale skin that was considered so lady like was just itching for a spray on tan, and what were arms for if not for covering in tattoos! Even so, I am told that it was Mr Hurrell, the gardener at the Vines who changed the name of Sluts Hill to Pump Hill. He knew for sure that there had once been a pump at the top of the hill and, because he lived on Bell Street overlooking Sluts Hill, he did not want anyone getting any wrong ideas.
 
There may always be Bad in Baddow but we are still working to make it Great. Hurrah!