KELVEDON
KELLY'S DIRECTORY OF ESSEX 1933
KELVEDON (or Easterford) is a parish and village, standing partly on rising ground on the north-western bank of the river Blackwater, over which is a bridge leading to Feering and on the ancient and main road from London to Colchester, with a station on the London and North Eastern railway, 42 miles from London, 4 north-east from Witham, 8 south-east from Braintree, 8 north-east from Maldon and 3 south from Coggeshall. From Kelvedon is a light railway to Tollesbury, the property of the London end North Eastern Railway Company. The parish is in the Maldon division of the county, Witham hundred and petty sessional division, Braintree rural district, Colchester, Clacton and Halstead joint county court district, Witham rural deanery, Colchester archdeaconry and Chelmsford diocese. The village is lighted with gas by a company and supplied with water from Coggeshall. The church of St. Mary the Virgin is a building of flint in the Early English style, consisting of chancel, nave of three bays, aisles, south porch and a western tower wills shingled spire, containing a clock and 6 bells: during the years 1876 and 1877 the church was restored by subscription at a cost of £3,000, the bells being rehung, a new pulpit erected, carved oak choir stalls and desk placed in the chancel and a new east window inserted, and there are memorial windows to the Rev. G. P. Bennett, vicar 1859-91, and his wife; to Sir Henry Curtis Bennett, their son; to Mrs. Frere, and to the Rev. Charles Dalton: the chancel was restored at the cost of the late Sir Thomas Sutton Western bart, as lay rector. The church affords 450 sittings. The register dates from the year 1558. The living is a vicarage, net yearly value £417, with residence and 57 acres of globe, in the gift of the Bishop of Chelmsford, and held since 1922 by the Rev. Robert William Croft M.A. of Keble College, Oxford, who is also rural dean of Witham. In the churchyard there is a granite cross, upon which are the names or those connected with the parish who gave their lives in the Great War, 1914-18. The Roman Catholic church, dedicated to Mary Immaculate and the Holy Archangels, is an edifice of red brick, and adjoining is the Rosary Convent of the Dominican Sisters, who conduct a convalescent home for working women and girls. There is also a Congregational chapel, erected in 1853, seating 350 persons, and a meeting house for the Society of Friends. The Freemasons have a lodge here (Easterford, 2342), opened in March, 1890; meetings are held monthly, on Thursday nearest the fun moon, The St. Mary's Parish Room, which will accommodate 250 persons, can be hired fur entertainments &c. The Institute, erected in 1911, contains a hall to seat 350. There is a Conservative and Unionist Club. Marler's charity, amounting to £10 yearly, is for the support of almshouses and the maintenance of the village well. Smith's, (1636) of £10 yearly, arising from lands in Easthorpe, is given to the poor in bread. The almshouses were entirely rebuilt, at a cost of £800, in commemoration of the Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Victoria. Here was born, 19th June. 1834, the Rev. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the famous Baptist minister, and son of the Rev. John Spurgeon: he was educated in a school at Colchester, and during his early years acted as usher in a private academy at Newmarket: he first began preaching in connection with a Nonconformist congregation at Cambridge, and at the age of seventeen took charge of a Baptist chapel Waterbeach; but in 1853 removed to the New York Street chapel, Southwark, and there remained till the opening of the Metropolitan Tabernacle in 1861: besides being a voluminous writer and the pastor of a congregation numbering about 6,000, he was an active politician, and opposed Mr. Gladstone's Irish measures of 1886, and in 1887 he withdrew from the Baptist Union; he died at Mentone, 31st January, 1892. Felix Hall, originally called Filliols Hall, having come into the bands of a family surnamed Filiol, it having previous to the Conquest been held by one Gadmund, in 1345 passed by marriage to Sir John de Bohan, then by marriage to Sir David Owen, natural son of King Henry VII.; in 1532 it passed to King Henry VII. who granted the manors of Filliol Hall to Richard Long esq. one of the Gentlemen of his Bedchamber; afterwards it passed to Anthony Abdy, a sheriff of London, in 1630, and remained in the Abdy family till 1744, when it passed by marriage or sale through the Williams' of Teadring Hall, who rebuilt Felix Hall, but sold it in 1761 to Daniel Matthews, who in turn sold to a Mr. Rook, who sold d to Mr (afterwards Lord) Western about 1790; it remained the property of the Western family till 1913, when Harry Wrightson eeq. who had married a Miss Western, bought the property; it is now the property of Capt. H. F. Jackson: it is a building with a portico supported by six Corinthian pillars, and stands in a fine park of about 140 acres, affording a good view over the valley of the river Blackwater. Kelvedon is divided into two manors, of one of which the Bishop of London is lord. A considerable portion of the land is owned by the farmers. The land is arable and mixed; subsoil, gravel and loam, The chief crops are wheat, barley, turnips, beans and peas and seeds. The parish contains an area of 3,201 acres of land and 11 of water; the population in 1931 was 1,695 in the civil and of the ecclesiastical parish in 1921, 1,534
GORE PIT, in Feering parish, which is supposed to have taken its name from a battle fought there, is a suburb of Kelvedon, on the other side of the Blackwater, over which is a bridge of one arch.
Post, M. O., T. & T. E. D. Office (letters should have Essex added)
PUBLIC ESTABLISHMENTS
St. Mary's Parish Room, Percy Childs, sec
Fire Brigade, formed in 1887
Institute, Henry T. Osborn, hon. sec
PUBLIC OFFICERS.
Assessors & Collector of King's Taxes, Walter Frank Siggers
Medical Officer & Public Vaccinator, Certifying Factory Surgeon & Medical Officer to Post Office & to the Board of Education, Albert Turner M.D.Durh., L.R.C.S. & L.R.C.P. & L.M.Edin., L.S.A.Lond. Kelvedon house, High street
Registrar of Births, Deaths & Marriages for Witham Sub-District, Frank Cundy, High st.; deputy, Mrs E. M Cundy
CONVEYANCE
Railway Station (L. & N. E.)
Moore Brothers' omnibuses to Colchester, via Tiptree, daily except thurs. & between Colchester & Braintree, via Coggeshall and Marks Tey, several time daily
CARRIER
Moore Basil Wilberforce, to Colchester wed. & sat. returning the same day; to Chelmsford, mon. thurs. & fri. returning the same day