Ongar Rural District Council

The Ongar Rural District Council was created in 1894 with the passing of the Local Government Act of that year.

It comprised the following parishes;

Abbess, Beuchamp and Berners Roding
Blackmore
Bobbingworth
Doddinghurst
Fyfield
Greensted
High Laver
High Ongar
Kelvedon Hatch
Lambourne
Little Laver
Moreton
Navestock
Norton Mandeville
Ongar
Shelley
Stanford Rivers
Stapleford Abbotts
Stapleford Tawney
Stondon Massey
Theydon Mount
Willingale

In 1955 Ongar Rural District council amalgamated with Epping Rural District to form the Epping and Ongar Rural District. The Local Government Act 1972 which came into force on the 1 April 1974 created the Epping Forest District Council. However, Blackmore, Doddinghurst, Kelvedon Hatch and Navestock and Stondon Massey (from the Ongar RDC) were transferred over to Brentwood District Council.

Ongar RDC built a council office for themselves on the corner of Castle Street and the High Street in 1896.

In 1897 Ongar RDC was asked by Essex County Council to establish a 26 bed isolation hospital to serve Ongar, Chigwell, Epping and Buckhurst Hill. However attempts to find a suitable location proved difficult. In November 1899 the owner of ‘Two Acre Shot’, a field in Stanford Rivers, was willing to sell it for £600. Progress was slow and Dr Quennell who had been appointed local medical officer of health in 1891, wrote in a report in 1900;

‘erection of an isolation hospital is under consideration, but without powers of compulsory purchase, it seems impossible to acquire a suitable site. The matter is one of urgent necessity, for the isolation of infectious diseases in small tenements is impossible.’

Purchase was not finally completed until 1903, when the vendor held a celebration dinner. However events had moved faster than plans, and in December 1901, a smallpox contact from Little Yeldham was arrested in a public house in Beauchamp Roding. He was detained overnight in a contractor’s hut at the new sewage treatment works, and removed the next day to a tent behind Holly Tree House, Stanford Rivers, for 14 days observation.

Pressured to take action Ongar RDC established the Ongar Smallpox Hospital by purchasing seven tents at a cost of £168. One could accommodate up to 10 patients, one was for nurses, another for caretakers, and four for ‘sanitary and other conveniences’.

These tents were erected on land in Stanford Rivers rented from a council member, but after local protests, were removed in February 1902 to a remote site near Ongar Park Wood. By this time several other urban and rural districts in Essex had made similar provision.
[Chelmsford had purchased a four-bedded tent hospital from Piggott Brothers in 1893 for £72.9s.4d.]

In March 1904 it was reported that there were eleven cases of smallpox at the workhouse infirmary. Those infected were removed to the tents at Toot Hill.