Theydon Mount and Hill Hall (Part 1)

Theydon Mount and Hill Hall (part 1)

Whilst reading through some old copies of the High Country Magazine I came across a series of articles on Hill Hall, Theydon Mount, written by Robert Vernon-Harcourt, in 1975. I have decided to reprint them here, updating and adding detail where necessary.

Part 1 - The Norman Conquest

There are many people who live only for the moment, who have no time, perhaps no desire, to think of anything beyond their daily lives. Others - and we hope you belong to their number - enjoy an all too rare opportunity to get away from the rigours of the present day and dream of the past. To each of us the past can mean different things, one or both of the world wars perhaps, our childhood, or further back to the events in history that we learned at school. Whether it be the history of our own time or of the world, all history is a quicksand into which events great and small ultimately sink, sometimes leaving a mark and sometimes not. Only the natural background of hills and valleys, of land and sea remains; all else round us is constantly changing.

To get a balanced view of the changing scene, it helps to look at it from some unchanging point, some firm rock in the quicksand of consuming time. We are proud and grateful that we have here such a rock in the great house of Hill Hall, built during the reign of Elizabeth the first by one of her close advisors at a time when many would say England was at the height of her prestige in the world.

Though the bricks and pillars of Hill Hall ring out for Elizabeth and her time, there was another Hill Hall here before this and the first part of our story deals with the earlier records of this place, records that go back to the beginning of school history books, the Norman Conquest of England.

Whether there was a house here in 1066 we cannot tell, but there is no doubt that there was a manor of Theydon - which included this parish of Theydon Mount and at least part of the neighbouring parishes that we now call Theydon Bois and Theydon Garnon. When William the Conqueror divided England among his knights, he presented the manor of Theydon as well as some 50 or 50 other manors in Essex, to a Dane called Suene as a reward for his army service during the conquest. It was Suene who built Rayleigh Castle, some 20 miles from here, as his principle residence. Suene in his turn gave this manor of Theydon to Robert Fitzwimarc, probably a relation - perhaps his son - and it was in Fitzwimarc's time, in 1086, that the Domesday Book was compiled. This as you may know, records in remarkable detail the number of men, animals and farm equipment in every part of England.

From the Domesday Book we learn that in 1086 the manor of Theydon consisted of three hides and 80 acres.

Theydon did have 3 ploughs, 3 rounceys (or horses), 3 colts, 39 pigs and 148 sheep, also 13 beasts. Theydon had no beehives, ¹⁴

All the land belonged to the King and was granted to his knights on condition they gave him military service. If the King was dissatisfied with that service, the land was liable to be forfeited. For instance in 1163 during a war against the Welsh, Henry of Essex, Lord of the Manor of Theydon (and incidentally Constable and Standard Bearer to King Henry II, dropped the Royal Standard in the mud and ran off the battlefield dressed as a monk, whereupon Theydon was immediately confiscated by the King.

The manor was subsequently reverted to the son of Henry of Essex, who called himself Henry de Theydon, but later on, in 1215, the year of the signing of the Magna Carta, King John captured Rochester Castle from a group of rebellious barons, and found Henry de Theydon inside, so back went the manor of Theydon to the crown again. There was nothing particularly unusual in this and it would be wrong to assume that the Lords of the manor of Theydon were any more unruly than anyone else. The inhabitants were probably a happy carefree crowd, and there can be no doubt that they thoroughly enjoyed the annual Theydon Fair, which Paulinus de Theydon started in 1225. ¹⁵

By 1236 there was a church here, dedicated to St Michael and St Stephen, standing on the site of the present church. We know the name of the rector in that year, but we have no earlier church records, so we cannot tell when the original church was built. It was probably made of wood standing on stone foundations.

At the time of the Crusades (about 1250), Henry III granted his Royal licence for the making of a park here. For the first time we now have references to the manor of Theydon Mount.

The Barons, under Simon de Montford, were up in arms against the dictatorial power of the King, representative government was being born. When Simon de Montford was eventually defeated at the Battle of Evesham in 1265, the Lord of the manor of Theydon Mount, one Robert de Sutton was captured fighting against the King, so once again ......

1324 - 1611

In 1324, the year after the Scots defeated the English at the battle of Bannockburn, Theydon Mount became the seat of a family called Malyns and for the following 600 years or so, from 1324 until1920, the manor of Theydon Mount was held successively by only three families, all related by marriage. namely the Malyns, the Hampdens and the Smyths.

The first reference to a house called Hill Hall comes in 1360 when the estate consisted of the house and 240 acres (roughly what it was nearly 600 years later). Hill Hall at that time commanded an annual rent of 15/7d, one pound of wax candles, one pound of pepper and two chickens.

For the next 120 years, until 1440, the Malyns family lived there. The Hampdens family, who came after the Malyns stayed there for another hundred years, undisturbed (as far as we know) by the Wars of the Roses which began only 24 miles away from here in the streets of St Albans, in 1455 History unfortunately does not indicate whether or not the Hampdens were pleased when the news reached them that Columbus had discovered a new land called America and that Henry VIII had gradually disposed of half a dozen wives, one of whom - en passant - had left him a daughter called Elizabeth, who was later to visit this house at Theydon Mount as Queen of England.

The last of the Hampden family to live at Hill Hall was Sir John Hampden, who dies childless in 1553. He left the estate to his widow, Philippa, who one year later married Sir Thomas Smyth,^1e who was the builder of the present Hill Hall, was born in 1512 at Saffron Walden, 25 miles north of here, and had a distinguished academic career. When he was a sickly youth of thirteen full of aches and pains, young Thomas was sent to Queen's College, Cambridge, where in due course he became a King's Scholar and Fellow at the early age of 19. At the age of 21 we find him lecturing on natural philosophy and Greek, while by the time he was 24 he had been appointed Professor of Civil Law and University Public Orator.

It was in this capacity that he prevailed on Queen Katherine Parr to intercede with Henry VIII on behalf of Cambridge University, when Henry having exhausted the spoils of the monasteries, was about to plunder the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. Little does Cambridge of today realise how much it owes to Thomas Smyth of Hill Hall. Besides studying law and the Greek language, Thomas Smyth took Holy Orders. When Edward VI succeeded his father, the Duke of Somerset became protector of the Realm and Thomas Smyth was appointed to the powerful position of Master of Requests.

Such was the precariousness of life at that time however, that towards the end of 1548, during which year he was knighted, was appointed Secretary of State¹⁷, and incidentally married his first wife¹⁸, he was also thrown into the Tower of London, together with Protector Somerset, and deprived of all his appointments. Somerset stayed in the Tower until his execution there three years later, but Sir Thomas managed to buy himself out with a large sum of money.

His capacity for getting out of tight corners was even more clearly demonstrated when in 1553 Mary came to the throne and started wholesale buring of Protestants. Sir Thomas was known to be a staunch protestant and several of his friends perished at the stake, but he managed to get away with his life by obtaining a special dispensation from his professed enemy, the Pope. He was, however, compelled to retire from public life. His first wife having died, he married Philippa Hampden in 1554, and the two of them lived quietly in the old Hill Hall until the end of Mary's reign¹⁹.

Such was his relief at escaping death at the stake, that soon after Mary's death, Sir Thomas changed his family crest from an eagle holding a pen to a salamander surrounded by flames.²⁰

With Queen Elizabeth on the throne, Sir Thomas again rose to great heights, thanks to the intervention of his friend Cecil, who put him back in office. From 1550 to 1568 he was Ambassador in France and it was probably during that time that he visited the chateau at Bournazel near Toulouse on which it is thought he based his designs for the present Hill Hall. There is some doubt regarding the date when work on the present building actually started. partly because it probably began as a simple extension to the original house, and also because, between the present house and the church there was another house called Mount Hall, which Sir Thomas and Lady Philippa sometimes occupied and in the Latin records of that time Mount Hall and Hill Hall are indistinguishable. The most likely time for the start of the construction of the present building seems to be between 1568 and 1570

By 1572 Sir Thomas Smyth had become a member of the Privy Council, Chancellor of the Order of the Garter, Secretary of State and one of Elizabeth's closest advisors. It is about this time that the Queen is most likely to have visited Hill Hall, even though the building was still many years from completion. There seems little doubt that Elizabeth came here as her arms are mounted in the Great Hall and the saddle on which she is said to have ridden here is on show at the Colchester Museum.

Sir Thomas was forced to retire from public life in 1576 on account of ill health, suffering from "cold Rheums". He wrote to Lord Burghley who was much subject of the same distemper, an account of his condition which sheds a lurid light on the doctoring of his day. When he sent for the physicians, "they according to their method first fell to purging him, to free his Body from pecant Humours as a preparatory to other Physic." The only effect was to "put his whole Bod, and all the Parts of it into a Commotion and Indisposition," so that all, even those parts which had previously been well, were "brought out of frame." The next treatment however, was innocent enough, consisting merely of "shaving his Head and wearing a Cap."

For a month the doctors worked away and then, apparently, gave up the task as hopeless. He lingered for fifteen months and died at Hill Hall, on the 12 August 1577.

We have gone into a lot of detail about Sir Thomas Smyth because they were his plans and ideas on which Hill Hall was built.

It was not finished when he died, but in his will he left £20 to his architect to be paid to him as soon as the house was tiled and all the carpentry work was done, and £10 to his works overseer (or foreman builder) in order (as the will reads) 'to encourage him to take pains to see that the workmen do their work as they ought."

Besides leaving a silver cup to Queen Elizabeth, Sir Thomas left money - and a design - for his monument in the old church. We are lucky that the monument survived when in 1611 the church was struck by lightning and burnt to the ground. It had stood for at least 400 years on the spot where our present church stands.

The Last 360 Years

The church was rebuilt is 1614, two years before the death of Shakespeare. It is one of the very few early C17th churches in England that have not had any structural alterations since they were built. It was dedicated by the then Bishop of London to St Michael the Archangel, a frequent dedication for churches standing on high ground. In 1635, some 14 years before the execution of King Charles in Whitehall, the newly installed church bell rang out for the first time, as it has rung. year in year out ever since. Just one bell, whether for regular church services, or baptisms, or weddings, or funerals.

Sir Thomas Smyth never saw the completion of his great plans for the house but no doubt it was he who ordered the wall paintings for the decoration of some of the rooms on the North side of the house. They are said to date from the late C16th but whether they were finished before Sir Thomas died is not known. One curious thing about them - they are only in the North wing of the house, which may have been built before the rest, and could even have been part of the earlier house. Wall paintings were used in Elizabethan times as relatively cheap substitute for tapestries which, on account of expense, could normally only be provided for the most important rooms. The paintings at Hill Hall which were probably done by a foreign artist²¹ were some of the finest examples in England. They were covered over about 1840 with lath and plaster. Two were uncovered by accident about 1940 and are now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The others came to light in 1951 when the house was being restored. Some were covered over again to preserve them. ²²

At his death his widow enjoyed the manor of Hill Hall for her life, and then it passed to Sir Thomas's nephew, Colonel William Smyth, who completed the construction of the house. He was knighted in 1603, the year that Queen Elizabeth died. He served as High Sheriff of Essex in 1616 and died at Hill Hall in 1626. His helmet with the salamander on top and what remains of his surcoat are still hanging in the church. He was succeeded by his eldest son, another William, who was himself succeeded five years later by his younger brother. Thomas. He got through the Civil War period without loss of liberty or estate, although his leanings must have been on the Royalist side, since he obtained a baronetcy soon after the Restoration in 1660. The second baronet was Sir Edward Smyth, who made alterations to the house. Sir Edward probably had an access of fortune through his wife, Jane Vandeput, whose father and brother were wealthy London citizens.

Looking at the structure of the house, only part of the South range is original. The wings were probably added about 100 years later, say about 1690. Experts say they show the influence of Sir Christopher Wren.

In 1710 the black marble and stone floor was put into the Great Hall. The whole of the East front was rebuilt in its present Queen Anne style in 1714²³, the year Queen Anne died and King George I came to the throne. The staircase in the right hand South-east comer was put in about 1720 and in the same year the sundial and the terrace wall on the South side were put up.

No house of this age is complete without its ghost, we have the Grey Lady who appears from time to time to remind us of the past. Her ancestry - or what might paradoxically call her 'raison detre' - is even more obscure than the lady herself.

Between 1740 and 1750, the clock was installed. In 1790 the gallery in the Great Hall was built. The Rev. Sir William Smyth, whose portrait, together with that of his wife Abigail was hanging in the Great Hall and was destroyed in the fire, was Rector of the newly combined parishes of Stapleford Tawney and Theydon Mount from 1755 to 1777. He and his wife lie buried in the SE corner of the churchyard, not as his predecessors do in the vault under the church.

In 1791, their son, also called William, commissioned the celebrated Essex landscape gardener, Humphrey Repton, who was a contemporary of Capability Brown, to redesign the garden and the surrounding park. Repton recommended amongst other things the removal of the walled garden from the near the house to its present position and the construction of the present road where it passes to the east of the church.

Succeeding Smyths did many good works: one built schools at Theydon Mount and Stapleford Tawney; another brought piped water to Theydon Mount village; yet another paid six guineas a year to provide a doctor for the village.

In 1842 Theydon Mount parish was one of the earliest in the country to provide money to pay for a local police constable.

The Smyths time was running out. By now they has acquired the additional name of Bowyer and the Bowyer-Smyths²⁴ left Hill Hall for the last time between 1890 and 1900, although they remained in possession of it until 1925. Soon after 1900 the house was let for a time to a certain 'Duke de Moro.' Little is known about him except that he was said to be an antique dealer or jeweller in London and he drove about in a bright yellow horse-drawn coach which the villagers called "The Mustard Pot."