THEYDON MOUNT PARISH HISTORY
By Anne Padfield
Theydon Mount is a long narrow parish, stretching from the River Roding in the south and almost to North Weald in the north. From the river it rises to a hilltop at Hill Hall, then swoops down to the phone box by North Farm, before rising again through Mount End to the woodland beyond at a height of 350ft. The steepness is unusual for Essex, and was caused by ice sheet movements millions of years ago. Mount Hill and the top half of Mount End defeat most cyclists.
The most ancient feature in the parish is the Roman road from Chigwell to Dunmow, which passes through the village from Hobbs Cross to North Farm (now a bridleway), up Mount End till it reaches cottages no 7 and 8, where it makes a detour. You can pick it up again along the top of Tawney Common.
The parish was dominated by Hill Hall for the last 600 years. It was an important manor with an estate covering all of Theydon Mount and, from the mid-1700s, half of Stapleford Tawney. The present house was built in Elizabethan times by Sir Thomas Smyth, an eminent scholar, lawyer, linguist and politician, and it remained with his descendants (Smyths and Bowyer-Smyths) until 1924. It was one of the first buildings (or maybe the very first) in the country to use Renaissance-style classical features on an otherwise Elizabethan mansion. Its original wall-paintings have, remarkably, survived changing fashions, bombing in WWII, its use as a women’s prison, a major fire, and quarter of a century of neglect. It was rescued from ruin in 1996 by English Heritage. The restoration was completed in 2000.
Until the 20th century, almost everyone in the village would have been employed on one of the farms rented from Hill Hall, or as servants or estate workers – carpenters, gardeners, woodmen or gamekeepers. Or they may have worked at the brickfields, also owned by Hill Hall, which began 400 years ago at the top of Mount Hill and only closed in 1920. The 17th century brickmaker’s cottage is still there near the old diggings, and the estate blacksmith’s was at Tarlins Farm on the Epping side of the brickfield.
There has been a church in Theydon Mount for 800 years, but in 1611 the old church caught fire and was completely rebuilt, reopening in 1614. It houses high-quality 17th century life-size monuments to members of the Smyth family, nine Georgian funeral hatchments (heraldic paintings) and a striking east window commemorating the First World War.
The 1600s must have been quite a turbulent time to live in Theydon Mount. Nationally there were conflicts between Anglicans and Puritans, Royalists and Roundheads, King Charles and Oliver Cromwell, culminating in the Civil War. Religion and politics affected even the ordinary folk of Theydon Mount, especially as the Smyths were Royalists and most of their tenants supported Parliament. The traditional Royalist rector was thrown out and replaced with a more hard-line Puritan. Some of the locals broke into Hill Hall when the owner was absent and removed various armaments, hiding them in their homes. And in 1648 John North (who gave his name to North Farm) “was slain in the service of the Parliament at Epping”, according to the parish burial records. The young Edward Smyth, heir to Hill Hall, joined the King’s forces as a boy soldier and survived the Civil War, but was killed in a fight at Cambridge University in 1652. In the 1660s a number of residents died of the plague.
The 1700s and 1800s were calmer, and people turned to more local issues. Members of the current Parish Council might be interested to know that their predecessors, known as the Vestry, were responsible for a wider range of responsibilities than today. They elected two churchwardens (to look after the church), a parish constable (law and order), a surveyor of the highways (potholes), two overseers of the poor (collecting and distributing rates for welfare), and of course a parish clerk. Charity really did begin at home in those days, because rates had to be collected in person from the better-off households and used for road repairs or handed out to those considered the deserving poor. Plenty of opportunity for arguments!
The village school was built at the top of Mount End in 1846, paid for by the Bowyer-Smyths. At one time there were 70 pupils, some from Stapleford Tawney, but numbers declined as families became less numerous, and it finally closed in 1942. It was used as a village hall after that, and is now a home.
The 1850s saw a scandal which must have been the top subject of village gossip. Sir William Bowyer-Smyth, middle-aged and married with three grown-up children, bigamously ‘married’ a 16-year-old Scottish girl. They went on to have 14 children before Sir William died in 1883.
The 20th century saw much more rapid change. The First World War affected everybody, and eight local men died fighting in France and Belgium. In the 1920s most of the Hill Hall estate was broken up and sold away from the main house. In World War Two Lord Edward Hay, owner of Hill Hall at that time, was killed. Eventually the house became a women’s prison (but Christine Keeler was never there, despite the myth) until it was gutted by fire in 1969. Mains water came to most of the parish by 1935, the phone box sometime after 1936, electricity in 1950, the pylons in 1960, and the M25 in 1983. The old brickfield became the site of new houses, mostly built in the 1950s, and now the whole parish is residential, with very few people working locally.
Skinners Farm became a golf course, and most of the other old farmhouses became private houses, with the surrounding land swallowed up by neighbouring farms or added to cottages and houses. Now there are no independent working farms, although you can still see grazing sheep, cattle, horses and even alpacas.
Strangely, there is no historic record of any pub, inn or beer house in Theydon Mount, although it is thought that a cottage in Mount End once operated as an unofficial off licence. But nowadays, in a reversal of history, Theydon Mount has its very own brewer.