Firstlings care home was Heybridge vicarage for many years

Part of Sohal Healthcare, ‘Firstlings’ was established in 1986 and was extended in 2004 to provide further bedrooms.

Before this latest chapter in its story, the building served a different purpose. Conveniently situated next to the ancient parish church of St Andrew, it was for many years the vicarage.

The original part of the present building is of three storeys in red brick, but in the scale of our local heritage it is comparatively modern – having only been constructed in 1908.

However, that Edwardian structure replaced a much older, 17th Century (or maybe even earlier) vicarage, demolished we are told because it was deemed too small to accommodate the vicar, his family and a sufficient number of servants.

Described (in 1894) as “a quaint little vicarage with its bright garden”, contemporary photographs show the old building to be a curious “crooked house”-like structure with central porch, a large bay window of small lights and two substantial chimney stacks.

It was apparently just as quirky inside - low ceilinged and with extensive exposed beams. During the late 18th and in to the early19th centuries the incumbent was just as eccentric as the building.

The Rev Francis J Waring was appointed to the living in 1797 and was “notorious for the extraordinary way he performed the duties of his office”.

It was said that he would read his church lessons at breakneck speed, give a very quick sermon (of just one or two sentences), sprint down the aisle and leap onto his horse to gallop off and repeat the performance at other neighbouring churches.

Having completed his day’s work, Rev Waring would retire to his characterful little vicarage where “his domestic arrangements were equally peculiar”.

Although he was by no means a poor man, he furnished the vicarage “with rough-hewn logs, instead of chairs”. Not only that, but his children ate their meals from a trough next to the split-log dining table and he and his wife slept in an enormous wicker cradle suspended from the ceiling.

The “new” vicarage, now Firstlings (Image: Stephen Nunn)

Following the Rev Waring’s death in 1833, a succession of Heybridge vicars, including the Reverends Crane, Wren, Clarke and McNeile, lived in the old vicarage.

It was during Archibald Patrick McNeile’s time that all of that unique architectural history was so unceremoniously swept away in favour of a replacement vicarage. Complete with all mod cons, the new building included staff accommodation on the top floor.

We know from the 1911 census that 37-year-old Rev McNeile was in residence in the new vicarage, along with Irish-born, 45-year-old wife Charlotte, their 11-year-old daughter Hilda, seven-year-old son Hector, and two servants – a cook named Florence Chapman, 29, and a housemaid - Isabella Cook, 18.

Rev. McNeile was still at the vicarage in 1921, as was his wife Charlotte. However, Hilda and Hector appear to have “flown the nest” and there were different servants – 31-year-old Annie Filby (the cook) and Clara Downes (housemaid, aged 21).

Fast forward to the eve of the Second World War and the Rev Horace Edwin Jones MA called the vicarage home.

In 1939 he was recorded as being there (aged 56) with wife Katie, 60, their daughter Muriel, 25, who served for the duration as secretary to the local ARP, and Gerald Drewitt, 35, a first aid organiser.

In fact, at that point in its history, the vicarage served as the Heybridge Civil Defence Fixed First Aid Post.

Post-war, there were further resident vicars, but moving on to the late-1970s, the diocese decided in its wisdom to dispose of the building.

It was put up for sale by Strutt and Parker in 1978 and then again in 1981. Five years after that latter date, ‘Firstlings’ opened and the rest we know.

The vicars of Heybridge were then housed in Crescent Road – initially at number 61 and then 1A, but to many older residents (those in ‘Firstlings’ and within the wider community) 7 The Street still is (and always will be) Heybridge vicarage.