It is in St Mary’s baptism registry that we first find the Norman typo, Baddow, rather than Baduvan. Which emphasises the idea that it was a place of “bad water”, and the idea continues with the name of Blackwater as used in the Blackwater Canal.
Baddow still is not Great yet. But one can now see the seeds of a village taking place, for monasteries in the 11th Century were not just religious centres, but also administrative centres dealing with the health, education and land usage regulations.

The papacy at the time was in a bit of a state and they were, among other things, arguing whether Priests should be able to marry. Priests in these days could marry, though nuns and monks, were sworn to chastity, but it seems that that was often temporary. And given that the bishops then were dab hands with a broadsword and had a tasty crew of knights to entertain, nunneries were often treated as a sort of Norman Tinder.

The little lane off Bell Street, The Munnions, according to oral history is meant to have been the nuns’ kitchens and there is rumoured to be a tunnel running across the road to the carpet shop, which was probably not there in the 11th Century. Instead, there would been “ecclesiastical buildings”, most likely a nunnery.

The Munnions

Great Baddow's Carpet Shop
The 12th Century was a chaotic one and despite some long reigning kings, half the time was given over to The Anarchy, as the historians call the war over the succession fought by Stephen and Matilda.

Stephen and Matilda
They seem not to have turned up in Baddow. Not that their battles did not affect Great Baddow, because the De Clare family in the shape of Robert, Duke of Gloucester, gained control of the place after capturing King Stephen at the battle of Lincoln 1141. But given that the Domesday Book recorded only 16 villagers, 3 freemen. 15 smallholders, and 6 slaves, one can assume that only a generation later the population was much the same with the addition of a few more nuns and monks. In short it was a backwater of little importance and the De Clare family had little interest in the place.
By 1236, the Barons ruled almost as independent states and Richard The Lion Heart fought crusades bankrupting England. Then King John fought the Barons, bankrupting himself trying to overturn the Magna Carta. And now a Richard as opposed to a Robert, was the Duke of Gloucester, based over in Clare Castle, Suffolk, and he ruled Baddow. He was a leading Baron who fought King John’s son, Henry III, and had him reaffirm the Magna Carta and basically helped set up an early form of Parliament. It was this period when Westminster Abbey got a massive refurbishment and the autonomy of the Church was firmly established, meaning they could do what they liked with the money their lands were earning them. Great Baddow must have also wanted in on this ecclesiastical building spree and so local families saw it as a means of raising their status, either that or their arms were twisted for more cash by the now powerful church.


It was then that we find the names Baddow Magna and Baddow Parva mentioned! We also get Much Baddow and Nether Baddow, as translations. And finally Great and Little! Why one rather than the other, is a mystery. Perhaps in Baddow it meant that the monastery was where the administration of the local lands was and thus a larger population, hence the Greater. We seem to have settled on using Great instead of Much or Magna in the 20th century!
Back in the 13th century, the place is so Magna now that finally someone important turns up: Robert The Bruce! Well, at least his father, who was also called Robert The Bruce just to confuse everyone. The Bruce family, having come over with the Conqueror, owned lands all over the place. The father of Robert The Bruce of Scotland fame, was born in Writtle and had a Deer Park over here in Great Baddow which he must have used for hunting, but there appears to be no record of that. Similarly, given that he contracted leprosy, one wonders what he was up to in Writtle and whether he had anything to do with the leper colony in St Giles Hospital at Bicknacre? It existed from the 12th to the 16th Century but there is sadly no documentary evidence of any connection. He must have picked up the disease somehow, assuming the diagnosis was correct. Practically any horrible skin disease could have been classified as Leprosy but we will never know.
What we do have court records of, is that in 1274 the man in charge of breeding Robert Bruce’s rabbits on the Deer Park, seems to have been pocketing the profits. So the Bruce family came south, and took the man to court. Rabbits were big business in a cold country with a big demand for riding gloves and boot linings. We have no idea what happened, other than the future king of Scotland, might have been an Essex boy rather than born on Donald Trump’s Golf Course in Ayrshire. The timing of the court proceedings and the birth, and the presence of the Bruce’s in Writtle at that time, do make it plausible. In short it is a long and bumpy ride up north for a heavily pregnant woman and a possible sick husband, with a lot of business to deal with in Writtle… Just saying! And a certain bona fide historian, Dr Fiona Watson, agrees that it is simply much more plausible that the Bruces were in Essex at the time.
In 1306 Robert The Bruce’s Deer Park passed, for obvious reasons, to the Bohun family, a member of which attempted to kill Robert The Bruce at Bannockburn, 1314. Instead, he got Robert’s axe in his head, so no love lost between those families. Scottish primary school children used to be taught: “Bruce and Bohun were fechtin for the croon, Bruce lifted up his battle axe and knockt the fellow doon!” Sad, but I am sure that acquiring a Deer Park in Great Baddow was quite a consolation for the Bohuns. Hurrah!

Bruce and Bohun "Fechtin for the croon"!