Bradwell's Down Hall can trace roots back to Saxon times

Nowadays the hall is a residential care home and I was privileged enough to have been invited there to take part in birthday celebrations for two of the residents – spectacularly aged 100 and 103.

While I was there, one of the members of staff gave me a guided tour of the house.

There are tantalising clues to its story in the old stained glass, the elegant staircase, Victorian graffiti scratched into the outside brickwork of the porch and tales of a blocked tunnel in what is now a cupboard.

After I left I kept thinking about the hall and decided to undertake a bit of research of my own.

It would appear that, historically, Down Hall was one of Bradwell’s four original manors.

That manorial land (and not the hall itself) dates back to Saxon times, when it was held by a lord named Modinc.

Following the Battle of Hastings, in 1066, it passed to a Norman aristocrat, Eudo Dapifer, and was valued in Domesday at 60/-.

Other lords followed until, in the 1250s, the de la Doune family succeeded to the title. They held it for the next 250 years and their long ownership gave rise to the name – a corruption of the Manor of la Doune, to Down.

In 1504, John Rainesford briefly became the lord, but it then transferred to the gloriously named Christmas family.

The manor was theirs until 1580, when the Mildmays took over. It was around that time that the associated medieval manor house (supposedly on the site of the existing hall) was rebuilt in the latest Tudor style.

Manorial records of 1603 still refer to the “Manor of La Downe, alias Down Hall”, and the Mildmays continued to be the lords until at least 1614.

Subsequently, it passed to the Everards, Merkes, Herdes and Hoares.

Court rolls survive for the manor, dated 1705 to 1751, and an estate map of 1753 includes an elevation of the house.

It was an ancient building by then, but was only demolished in the early 19th Century, when yet another house was built on the site.

Improvements were made to it in 1822, but some of the household furniture was put up for sale under a so-called “distress for rent” (an ancient remedy for recovering rent arrears from tenants).

Robert Baker, of Boreham, was commissioned to draw up a plan of Down Hall, including the layout of its garden, in 1824. Three years later, in 1827, the building was in the occupation of Bradwell farmer Robert Page and his family – although the manor was actually owned by Thomas Truesdale Clarke, of Swakelyes, Hillingdon, Middlesex.

When Robert Page died, his widow, Jane (née Bygrave), continued to live at Down Hall and appears there in the census of 1851, along with sons Robert Jnr and James, and three servants. Around the same time, the gardens were extensively landscaped.

By the time of the next census (in 1861), 35-year-old Robert Jnr had taken over as the farmer (of 1,000 acres) and was head of the household, albeit with his mother and sister in residence with him.

Seven members of the Sewell family were also visiting when the enumerator called that day and there were now seven servants.

Robert Page Jnr continued to rent Down Hall until he eventually died there in 1898.

After Thomas Truesdale Clarke, the lords of the manor were Thomas Bryan Clarke Thornhill, Harrison GCH de Crespigny, John Manning Prentice and Clement W Parker.

The hall was put up for sale in 1900 and by 1904 it was occupied by Mrs Stewart Wortley. She submitted building plans in that year for the inclusion of a billiard room.

The manor itself belonged to David S Hodge Esq and he still possessed it in 1912.

I have a mysterious Down Hall headed letter, dated Saturday, July 18, 1914, from a Charles James to a sheriff’s officer, Walter T Feather, about money due to a Ms Nicholas.

Down Hall and five acres were put up for sale in 1937 and then along came the war.

With the construction of an airfield at Bradwell, Down Hall was requisitioned as officers’ quarters and, back in 2000, I interviewed an ex-Mosquito navigator with 488 Squadron, who had vivid memories of the “carefree atmosphere” of his old billet.

With the arrival of peacetime, Down Hall was put up for sale again in 1949.

Other owner/occupiers followed and, in more recent times, the hall’s roll call includes (but I am sure not exclusively) the surnames Dean, Farley, Dixon, Goodbourne and Burdfield.

The Patten family acquired Down Hall in 2007, refurbished it, added an extension and opened it as the residential care home that we know today.

Retirement bungalows were built in the grounds in 2014 and, in advance of their construction, an archaeological dig took place.

A report by my old friend Howard Brooks describes the features discovered in the five trenches as all “post-medieval/modern pits, associated with the landscaping of the grounds”.

Rather frustratingly, there was no evidence of the buildings connected with the earlier medieval manorial hall, or the later Tudor one.

So although we have a good documentary trail, it would appear that Down Hall still hasn’t quite yet given up all of its earthly secrets.