Fire at Hill Hall (1969): A Letter from Kenneth Neale

Fire at Hill Hall (1969): A Letter from Kenneth Neale

Originally published in The Essex Journal, Volume 4 (1969), pages 172–173.

Correspondence: News of Hill Hall

19th April 1969
17 Gordon Road,
Chingford, E.4.

Dear Mr. O'Leary,

Thank you for your letter of 17th April. I spent this morning at Hill Hall, now a sad and blackened shell, and I feel I must write to you about it as I know of your personal interest and you may wish to put a note in Essex Journal.

The fire started at about 11 p.m. on 18th April and the alarm was raised by one of the prisoners. By the time that the fire brigades arrived there was a serious conflagration in the north-west upper corner of the main building, but all the occupants were, mercifully, safely evacuated.

The fire spread around the upper parts of the great quadrangular building and then downwards leaving a gutted shell although the external facades are largely intact. Only in the south-west corner and the west wing is the interior destruction not complete.

The lovely clock and cupola lie burnt and destroyed in the rubble at the foot of the north wall behind the main entrance. But there is some hope that at least some of the murals can be retrieved.

When I was there this morning the ruins were still smoking and here and there fire was still present. The general desolation of the scene was emphasised by the green peace in the April fields and woods of the surrounding Essex countryside and farmlands.

Around the house daffodils and primroses adorn the tree-clad lawns now laced with hoses and the tyre-marks of the fire engines and police vehicles. It is an indescribably tragic scene.

For almost four hundred years this lovely building has graced Theydon Mount and much had been done by the Prison Department to put and keep it in immaculate condition.

For me the most poignant touch was the sculptured white salamanders rising from the flames which, mounted on pillars at the entrance from the south front, still symbolise the Smith tradition.

I can only hope that they are prophetic and relevant to the future as to the past glories of this lovely old Elizabethan home. For the present it joins its neighbour, Copped Hall, as an empty, fire-consumed relic of two Elizabethan figures whose careers, although they were of very different stature, were nevertheless closely entwined.

When we know more about what is to happen I will let you know – meanwhile I shall persevere with the biographical and architectural study that I have promised for the Essex Journal.

Yours sincerely,

Kenneth Neale

Footnote

The article ‘Sir Thomas Smith and Hill Hall, Essex’ by Kenneth Neale appeared in The Essex Journal, Volume 5, pages 3–22.