Kelvedon Hall, Kelvedon Hatch

The first mention of the estate occurs in the Domesday Book. The estate became the principal manor of the parish of Kelvedon Hatch. In 1538 the manor was sold to John Wright for £493. For nearly the next 400 years the estate remained in the hands of the Wright family. Tradition was clearly important in the family for there were to be thirteen successive John Wrights. The present hall was built in 1743 for John Wright, replacing the original manor house.

The house is a very good example of a small country seat of a 18th century land-owner. The hall is built of red brick to a U-plan, with a three-storey, seven-bay central block linked to two-storey pavilions at either side. There is a red brick stable block and an orangery.
Next to the manor house was St.Nicholas' Church which had been on the site since at least 1372, and there may even have been a Saxon church before that. The first three John Wrights were Protestants, but early in the 17th century the next John Wright converted to Roman Catholicism. He encouraged to do this by William Byrd, the famous composer, who lived in nearby Stondon Massey. The Wrights were to remain devout Roman Catholics for their remaining time in Kelvedon Hall. In the new house a chapel was built, the existence of which was kept secret during the time Catholics were being persecuted. In 1753 the church was rebuilt, but in 1895 it was abandoned for a new church built in the village.
In 1837 the Kelvedon estate consisted of 880 acres which included the Hall and grounds and several other farms and cottages. The estate continued in the Wright family until the death of John Francis Wright in 1865 and the estate passed to his nephew Edward Carington Wright, who in turn left it to his own nephew Sir Henry J. Lawson. The house was advertised to rent in 1865, the advert for which described the Hall as being ‘seated in a beautifully timbered park…….the pleasure grounds and gardens are laid out with great taste in lawns, flower-beds and adorned with clumps of evergreens and shrubs and a fine sheet of water stocked with fish; walled kitchen gardens sloping to the south, fully cropped and planted with choice fruit trees, vinery green-house, melon-ground, etc., - the whole about 12 acres’. In Rush’s 1897 Seats in Essex Kelvedon Hall grounds are described as being ‘well laid out and ornamented by plantations and a piece of water of above two acres in extent’. From 1891 the house was occupied by a tenant, John Algernon Jones, a wealthy city stockbroker, and on his death in 1916 the estate was purchased from Sir Henry in 1922 by Jones’s widow. The 1920 sales particulars for the 885 acres site describe the grounds as being ‘well laid out grounds and adorned by some forest timber and well grown ornamental trees and shrubs, including araucaria, cupressus, weeping ash, beech, stately chestnut, and fine magnolias’. Also described were the tennis court, sloping lawns adorned by numerous rose beds and herb borders.
These beds were intersected by winding gravel walks, bordered by fine box hedges whilst adjoining a ‘capital’ aviary. There was also a walled kitchen garden that was well cultivated and stocked with a variety of wall and bush fruit. To the front of the house was a large sheet of ornamental water with shady wilderness walks from the grounds to Park Wood.
In 1923 a large portion of the Kelvedon Hall Estate was sold: this included several cottages, woodlands, and five plots of land ‘suitable for developing as a small holding’. Upon the death of Mrs Jones the house was sold in 1932 to St Michael’s Roman Catholic School but the school closed in 1937. Much of the timber in the grounds was felled during this time. The 1932 sales document descries the house as being ‘approached by a long carriage drive, mostly of fine oaks. After skirting the lake the drive sweeps round a wide lawn, flanked by projecting wings of the house to the columned entrance porch’. The description of the gardens included information on the walled kitchen garden with tomato house, vinery, plant house and frames. There were also standard and bush fruit, including old mulberry and fig trees, plus a newly planted orchard of apples, plums, and quince. The particulars also mention the walled and enclosed peacock garden and the ha-ha separating the pleasure grounds from the undulating well-timbered eighty acre park. The estate covered 147 acres at this time.
St Michael's Roman Catholic School.
Below is the text of a prospectus issued by the school
Kelvedon Hall is a beautiful Georgian Mansion, situated in its own grounds of nearly 150 acres of undulating park and woodland.
The house is admirably suited to its use as a school, having many fine examples of the work of the Adams Brothers and other features, all of which tend to increase the children's love and appreciation of real art.
The main staircase, of stone, leads to the main staircase hall, which is one of the chief beauties of the house.
The classrooms and dormitories, all in the Adam style, are pleasant, lofty and lit by large windows.
Electricity, and the new bathrooms and hot water system have been newly installed for the purposes of the school, and the chapel, a relic of penal times, has been re-roofed and renovated, all at very considerable cost.
The school is run by the Secular Oblates of St. Benedict, and its aim is to educate the girls on modern lines in accordance with the best traditional principles.
Curriculum.
It is expected that all those who are capable of doing so will terminate their school career by passing either School Certificate or London Matriculation.
Highly qualified specialists are engaged to teach their own subjects, viz.: music, Elocution, Dancing, and Art.
Games.

The spacious grounds afford ample opportunities for games, and the girls play tennis in summer and netball in winter.
The health of the pupils has always been remarkably good, cases of serious illness being almost unknown.
1 lb. of good sweets may be sent by parents at the beginning and middle of each term. Birthday cakes may also be sent, but apart from this, pupils are not allowed to receive hampers.
Pupils are not allowed to bring or receive books, newspapers or magazines.
Pocket money, as supplied at the beginning of each term, is deposited at the School Bank, and pupils are supplied with cheque books at nominal cost.
It is earnestly requested that fees be paid at least one week before the opening of each term. Fees will be collected by Barcaly's Bank Ltd., Ongar.
At the beginning of each term every pupil should bring a small case containing all that is necessary for the first night.
A full term's notice in writing is required before the removal of a pupil, otherwise a term's fee will be charged in lieu of notice.
The Uniform special to the school must be obtained at the school outfitters: details of this and other uniform ill be supplied on application.

Fees:-
22 guineas per term for pupils under 10 years.
30 guineas per term for pupils over 10 years.

Day Scholars:
3½ guineas per term for pupils under 10 years.
5 guineas per term for pupils over 10 and under 12.
7 guineas per term for pupils over 12."
Their occupancy of Kelvedon Hall was short lived as there were a number of unfortunate accidents which resulted in a number of deaths. The school closed in 1937.
Henry Chips Channon (see below) who was negotiating to buy the hall at this time, wrote about this period of the use of Kelvedon Hall in his diary:
“..the story of the strange nuns who have inhabited it. The Superior is a Miss Alton, who must be half-mad; she is a tyrant, given to moods and mental excesses. For a time she had a flock of seventeen nuns under her, ‘Benedictine Oblates’ they were called, but the Roman Catholic church has denied all relations with them, although for some years a RC priest was paid £2 per week to go to Kelvedon and administer religious instruction to the unhappy females. The money soon ran out, and the order became impoverished, and they took in mental patients, ‘border cases’ and the like, and lived on the proceeds. But trouble overcame them; one nun, the gardener told me and he knew her well, was so unhappy that she drowned herself in the lake, after threatening many times to do so. And two years ago there was a serious scandal, for one of the patients, a perfectly sane woman, jumped out of the window and was found dead. A few hours before, earlier in the night, she had escaped, only in her nightdress (as the nuns had hidden all her clothes) to a nearby farmer’s house. He had led her back in tears to the nuns who locked her up for a fortnight….and she killed herself.”

Newspaper Reports about St Michael's Roman Catholic School
NUN DROWNED IN A LAKE Sister May Primavcsi (57), a nun, was found drowned in the lake of the Convent at Kelvedon Hall, Ongar, Essex. Sister Primavesi belonged to the Convent of the Good Shepherd at East Finchley. She went to Kelvedon Hall about week ago from a home In Manchester, with the intention of staying about a fortnight.
WOMAN'S DEATH AT KELVEDON HALL CONVENT Mrs. Cathleen Gallivan, 53, wife of Mr. John Gallivan, a businessman, High Street, Walthamstow, died on Thursday morning at the Kelvedon Hall Convent, Kelvedon Hatch, where she had been staying as a paying guest undergoing a rest cure. The previous evening, at about 11.30, Mrs. Gallivan was found by Sister Hughes lying in her nightdress seriously injured on the lawn of the convent. Sister Hughes called assistance, and Dr. J. D. Fiddes, of Brentwood, was summoned. Mrs. Gallivan lived in a room of her own in the front of the house on the third floor. A few days ago she caught cold, and was advised to stay in her room. The floor of her bedroom is polished. She was apparently sitting at the window—which has a low frame and is about feet above the ground—for the book she had been reading lay on a chair the sill. It is possible the chair slipped and she overbalanced and fell out. She was popular with other guests at the convent. She had left the convent to visit her husband and two sons at Walthamstow twice since she came to Kelvedon Hall last November. The inquest Mrs. Gallivan will be held at Ongar Police Station at 12 noon to-day (Saturday).
CONVENT TRAGEDIES Attributed by Sister Superior to “Evil Influence” Sister Mary Frances D'Alton, Sister Superior the Kelvedon Hall Convent, near Ongar (Essex), stated last night that owing to the misfortunes that had befallen the secular oblats St. Benedict’s since they came to the centuries old hall she had decided to sell the house without delay.
In the four years they had been Kelvedon Hall they had been dogged ill-fortune. The latest several tragedies was on Wednesday, when Mrs. Catherine Gallivan, of High Street, Walthamstow, resident at the convent, was found beneath her window dying.
"We are unanimous,” she said, "in the feeling there is something terrible about the place, and we feel should all leave soon as possible. Stood the day we came have never felt happy The convent seems to have some evil influence over us. It is uncanny to the last degree.”
The convent, which was built in 1542, belonged to a famous Roman Catholic family for centuries. It contains many examples of the work the Adams brothers, and the rooms, all in the Adam style, are very large.
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Despite the rumours that the house was haunted, it was purchased by Henry (Chips) Channon M.P. Channon who had been elected as a Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) in 1935. He failed to achieve ministerial office and was unsuccessful in his pursuit of a peerage, but he is remembered as one of the most famous political and social diarists of the 20th century. He was responsible for the restoration of the hall to its former elegance.
During World War II the house was used as a Red Cross convalescent home from 1941 to 1945.
Henry’s son Paul, succeeded his father as Conservative MP for Southend West for 38 years, from 1959 until 1997. He served in various ministerial offices, and was a Cabinet minister for 3½ years, as President of the Board of Trade and Secretary of State for Trade and Industry from January 1986 to June 1987, and then as Secretary of State for Transport to July 1989.
He retired from Parliament at the 1997 general election and was created a life peer as Baron Kelvedon, of Ongar. He died at his home in on 27 January 2007, at the age of 71.