The Bacon family crest above the Hall's main entrance.
HISTORY
Ramsden Hall goes back to the very early times of English history - A petition of around the 1320s has one Ruaf atte Ree 'as tenant of the king ... and (fermour) of Ramsden Hall in Essex ... The petition itself shows Rauf atte Ree only at Ramsden Hall ... the dispute concerned the king's (maner of Ramesden Hall in Essex) ... the surname atte Ree can be traced to Ree in Loughton ... Ramsden Bellhouse and Ramsden Crays are adjacent parishes'. (1) Much later Robert Woodgate owned Ramsden Hall from at least 1805 when he married a Miss Watkins in Greenwich. This was, as a minimum, a second marriage as his third daughter Frances married Mr J. Walker of Mile End in 1811! Another daughter, Elizabeth, married in 1835 but by then Robert Woodgate was dead - Elizabeth was described as being 'of Ramsden Hall'. The exact sequence of Ramsden Hall owners is unclear but Frederick Francis owned the Hall at least in the 1870s and probably to the mid 1880s; his second son, Charles King Francis, went to Oxford and then became a lawyer. Later 'Squire' Batard was followed by the Rutherford family and in the mid 1880s the Hall was owned by J.S. Davies who had at least one son, Edward Fox St Aubrey Davies. The father and son both attended Cambridge University at different times. The son had previously attended Rugby School. By 1900 the Hall and estate (the estate was over a thousand acres, with approximately three hundred acres being woodland) was owned by the Bacon family. 'Squire' Bacon (who was educated at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford University) wished to purchase Norsey Wood and run a private road through to Billericay but nothing came of the idea. This suggests the main entrance at that time was the road directly up from Norsey Wood; there are large brick pillars by the school's back entrance which supports this view. 'Squire' Thomas Walter Bacon J.P. (1873-1950) - an engineer - had at least three sons namely Francis (see the biography to the right), Christopher and Anthony. Bacon was a patron of the painter William Nicholson; Nicholson's paintings showing the Bacon children are held by the National Trust and are generally on display at Fenton House in London. Bacon's close friends included Sir Charles Holmes who was Director of the National Gallery 1916-1928. (The Bacon family were well connected; Thomas Walter Bacon was the fourth son of Sir Henry Hickman Bacon (the 10th Baronet of Redgrave and the 11th Baronet of Mildenhall). The most notable member of the extended family was the philosopher Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount of St Alban.) On his arrival (at Ramsden Hall) Squire Bacon kept on all the old servants, including Edward Wood, the keeper; John Booth, the head gardener; old John Grimes, the coachman; and John Amos and his gang, who acted as estate men ... The Squire carried out great improvements on the estate. The old front lodge where John Booth lived was pulled down and a new one built. Many of the estate workers were rehoused in new cottages, and the Hall itself was enlarged and improved. Two adjoining cottages were built in 1909 at the corner of Goatsmoor Lane and Potash Road (2) One can certainly see the new 'Bacon' entrance to the Hall (as the Bacon crest is above the exterior main door), and the Assembly Hall also was built at that time; the external downpipes for it clearly show the 1900 date. In 1914 'Trenches were dug in Forty Acres wood (being part of the estate), across the park at Ramsden Hall and at a later period in Norsey Wood'. (3) During the First World War at least some members of the Sherwood Foresters were billeted on the estate and were apparently well looked after. In April 1918 the staff included Charles Cooper whose memories are the source of much of the history of the Bacon period. He records that once a year a tailor would come and measure so new uniforms could be made for the chauffeur, gamekeeper, footmen and hall boys. The Bacon family in 1936 are recorded as members of the Rhododendron Association. This was not surprising as there was a large rhododendron garden of approximately three to four acres in the middle of Forty Acres Wood (probably previously called Forty Acres Plantation) but it 'was inhabited by man-eating mosquitoes'. (4) At this point there was an extensive amount of fruit trees were in the Ramsden Hall gardens; there was a large apple store. The Hall was taken over by the military during World War Two (including the 127 Infantry Brigade in March 1941); Mr and Mrs Bacon moved to North Wales. Charles Cooper records an amazing incident - that of the incendiary bomb which landed down the chimney of the billiard room in Ramsden Hall. The room was full of furniture which had been cleared from the rest of the Hall when the Army was billeted there, and it was locked and sealed. The bomb came down the chimney, which was quite a large one, and burned itself out in the grate. (5) By January 1946 the Hall and estate were sold 'and the farmers on the estate were given a chance to buy in their farms, which they all did. All the employees who lived in cottages were allowed to carry on rent free, and with a small pension for life' (6). Around 1956 part of the Estate (474 acres) was placed on sale again; it is not known why this happened. It is unclear when the school began; we suspect more or less immediately after the war. We would appreciate any information about the school in this early period and about the photographs at the top and bottom of this column. In 1967 the school had fifty-eight students on the roll. __________________________ (1) Page 6, eds. C. Kay, S. Horobin, C. Hough, J. Smith and I. Votherspoon, New Perspectives on English Historical Linguistics; Lexis and transmission (2) Pages 1 - 2, Charles Cooper, The Story of the Son of the Assistant Gamekeeper at Ramsden Hall; a typed manuscript (3) Page 7, op. cit. (4) Page 24, op.cit (5) Page 34, op. cit. (6) Page 36, op. cit. |
FRANCIS THOMAS (Tom) BACON
Undoubtedly the most important person linked to Ramsden Hall was Francis Thomas Bacon. 'Francis Thomas Bacon was born at Ramsden Hall, Billericay, Essex on 21 December 1904. He was educated at Eton College, 1918-1922, specialising in science and winning the Moseley Physics Prize in 1922, and at Trinity College, Cambridge obtaining a third class in the Mechanical Sciences Tripos in 1925. He served an apprenticeship at C.A. Parsons & Co. Ltd, Heaton Works, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1925-1928, subsequently working in the Searchlight Reflector and Research and Development Departments at Parsons, 1928-1940. It was while at Parsons in 1932 that he first came to appreciate the potential of the fuel cell and set himself the task of carrying out the practical engineering to prepare the way for it to be considered for commercial application. In 1940-1941 he started full-time work on the hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell at King's College London with the financial support of the consulting engineers Merz and McLellan. From 1941 to 1946 he was temporary experimental officer at H.M. Anti-Submarine Experimental Establishment, Fairlie, Ayrshire, working on ASDIC, the underwater submarine detection system. In 1946 he resumed experimental work on the hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell at Cambridge University, first in the Department of Colloid Science, then in the Department of Metallurgy and from 1951 to 1956 in the Department of Chemical Engineering. This work was supported financially by the Electrical Research Association. In 1956 Bacon became consultant to the National Research Development Corporation (NRDC) undertaking fuel cell development work at the Cambridge engineering firm Marshalls where a 6kW forty cell battery unit was demonstrated in August 1959. From 1962 to 1971 he was principal consultant on fuel cells to Energy Conversion Ltd, the first British effort to manufacture fuel cells, first at the BP Research Centre, Sunbury on Thames, Surrey and then at Basingstoke, Hampshire. From 1971 to 1973 he was consultant on fuel cells to Fuel Cells Ltd, at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Harwell, Oxfordshire. In 1973 he retired though he continued to follow the development of fuel cells very closely for the rest of his life. Although Bacon hoped to see the adoption of a high efficiency/low pollution fuel cell in everyday applications such as transport, it was in the unforeseen application of space exploration that the Bacon cell achieved its most notable success in his lifetime. In the USA the Pratt and Whitney Division of United Aircraft took out a licence on the Bacon patents and used the concept of the Bacon cell in a successful bid to provide electrical power for the Apollo moonshot. The fuel cells operated successfully in the manned moon flights and subsequent space applications, providing electricity for the functioning of systems and the production of drinking water. Thus Bacon's pioneering work may be considered essential to the Apollo programme Bacon was appointed to the Order of the British Empire in 1967. He was elected FRS in 1973 and became an initial Fellow of the Fellowship of Engineering in 1976. Amongst other honours and awards of note are the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Award for Scientific and Technical Contribution in 1976, the Electrochemical Society's Vittorio de Nora - Diamond Shamrock Award in 1978, an honorary degree from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1980 and the first Grove medal commemorating the work of Sir William Grove in 1991. He married Barbara Papillon in 1933 (one son, one daughter, and one son deceased). He died on 24 May 1992.' For more information see http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/A2A/records.aspx?cat=014-ncuacs68697&cid=-1#-1 The biography has been used from The National Archives website under Open Government Licence http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/2/ On the name of Ramsden Hall and Roman coins '... 1881. The next find took place some twenty years later, when about 1,100 copper or bronze Roman coins were found in the side of a ditch by a labourer, on a farm called Tyled Hall, now known as Ramsden Hall, about half a mile from Billericay. I am told that these coins, with one exception, were sold in London by the discoverer within twenty-four hours of the find. Page 5, E. Walford, J.C.Cox, G. L. Apperson, The Antiquary; A Magazine devoted to the Study of the Past 1889 Vol. XX |