The History of Great Baddow

Allow me to make an assertion here that I am sure is deeply controversial: local history is not boring!!!

I added three exclamation marks to emphasise the point. I had a few to spare because on editing the following history I discovered a superfluity of what printers used to call "screamers". Senility might be the reason my little finger hit the exclamation key or just the sheer surprise of having discovered yet another fascinating fact. Either way, allow me to take you on a brief but quite thorough history of Great Baddow.

I began my researches by reading the 'Great Baddow Oral History' compiled by Allen Buckroyd in 2003. The local library also houses print outs of a series of four walks describing the main buildings along the roads in this village, again produced by Allen Buckroyd. I also came across a couple of talks by local historian Gloria Harris that gave me insights into the Pascal family and into Clarissa Trant.
 
Using these materials as my starting point, I then searched through many history books, court records, old newspapers, archaeological records, historical papers in various often ancient journals, and had a trip to the Essex records office. I discovered that Great Baddow hosted many colourful characters involved in some of England's most significant moments and the village echoed the social changes seen throughout much of England through the centuries.
 
A lot of local histories are exercises in nostalgia and having not lived in the UK for thirty years, I am not particularly gripped by those forces. Probably my early exposure to Kingsley Amis's "Lucky Jim" warned me of the perils of Merrie England, not to mention my delving into colonial history while very much living the part, put Blighty, a hindu word by the way, into a very different context. History has an ironic tinge to it for me and given the idiocy of much of humanity’s endeavours one is surprised that anything gets done and that sometimes something akin to progress takes place.
 
The past is not quite as much of a foreign country as L. P. Hartley, a once popular novelist, once said. People are much the same all over the world, past and present. Perhaps Neanderthals had a different edge to them that would never have led them on the path to reality shows, though I understand that the show Dating Naked, hosted by a set of alarmingly white teeth, might have appealed to them. But on the whole, our ancestors are just us without electricity and as prone to fads, fashions, fantasies and conspiracy theories. And if the archaeological record is anything to go by, they have an inordinate obsession with drains and ditches.

Me in Voortrekker mode.

 
I have divided The History of Great Baddow into 16 chapters, taking the reader from 500 million years ago right up to the mid 20th century. My 20th century section is brief as I believe that section up to the present will require a very different approach looking at rather dry topics such as demographic changes, town planning, local government structures and shifting cultural patterns. Which means I have ambitions for a future volume but how I am going to write that in an entertaining fashion escapes me at the moment. There is a need for a clear and accessible history of local government and its function so that we, the voter, can actually know what and who we are voting for. Need and demand are however very different as we rarely want what’s good for us. I’ll have to see how much enthusiasm I can generate in myself if no-one else.
  
Lawrence Gray
 

8th Sept. 2024

For those who want to see a PDF versions link to it here.
 
Let me know of any interesting bits of Great Baddow history that I've missed.