Burghstead Lodge - A Display in the Children's Library at Billericay Library

To get the full benefit of the display, please view it at the Children's Library at Billericay Library.

The house that this library is joined to - Burghstead Lodge, a grade two listed building, is described on the British Listed Buildings website as ‘a fine eighteenth-century red brick house'. According to Nikolaus Pevsner's 1950s guide to English buildings, it was the finest in Billericay.

The initials and date ‘ST 1769’ are still visible on the hoppers at the top of the rainwater pipes on the library side of the building. ST was Smith Taylor, a wine merchant and landowner, who built this house in 1769; the Taylor family had owned this land and a previous house on it, known as the White House or possibly White Horse, for several years.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the house and its then 9 acres of land, complete with stables, coach house, barn, and other outbuildings, passed through various owners, not all of whom lived there. Catalogues of sale from times when the house and its contents were put up for auction offer a glimpse into the richly furnished interior enjoyed by Smith Taylor and his successors. In the 1780s, the attorney James Vanderzee and his wife Philadelphia, who succeeded Smith Taylor, were selling off such treasures as a copper coffee pot, a copper tea kettle, a copper chocolate pot, elegant prints of the King and Queen (George III and Charlotte) glazed and framed, a four poster goose feather bed (on the first floor) and a sacking bed (upstairs on the servants' floor) all linked by an imposing oak staircase, which is one of the few original features that remains today.

From 1874 to 1883 the house was occupied by the Sparvel-Bayly family. They were the first residents to leave more tangible evidence of their presence, in the shape of photos and a memoir written by Edith Sparvel-Bayly. The oldest daughter of the family.

Mr J. A. Sparvel-Bayly was a wealthy landowner, an enthusiastic archaeologist, and a Justice of the Peace. He moved from Kent with his wife and three young daughters: Edith, Ida, and Katharine (Renie), and spent a great deal of time in Norsey Woods digging up remains, including from the time of the Peasants’ Revolt.

Edith Sparvel-Bayley wrote about her time as a child living in Burghstead Lodge in her nostalgic memoir called Yesterday. She wrote this many years later, when she was a retired schoolteacher living in Wales. Edith describes the house and gardens, which were the scene of a happy but short-lived childhood. Every room was lit with gas, a modern luxury at the time, except for the dining room with its more decorous and elegant candelabras. In the dining room hung a portrait of Great Uncle Charles: a revered figure and the source of the family fortune. A smaller room on the ground floor was known as ‘Papa's Study’ and contained all his archaeological finds. Their imaginative and romantically inclined Papa told his daughters that their spare bedroom was haunted; rumours of ghosts were rife.

The kitchen was an outbuilding attached to the side of the house, and only accessible via the cellar and two steep staircases. This made it awkward for the maids and difficult to keep dishes hot in transit to the dining room, so Mr Sparvel-Bayly had a trap door installed so that dishes could be handed up from the lower pantry to the hall.

The garden was an idyllic place for the children to play, with fruit and nut trees, lawns, two summer houses, and a Q-shaped pond. Edith would leave feasts made of flowers for the fairies to enjoy by moonlight, and enjoyed coming to see whether they had been eaten the next day. She also described burying containers filled with items that might be of interest to children in the future around the grounds: a Victorian version of time capsules. Mr Sparvel-Bayly; in addition to local legends about a ghost, had heard rumours of a hidden cellar underneath the grounds, and managed to discover its location, unearthing a trap door in the grounds in front of the house which led to a bricked chamber, empty except for an old wine barrel.

The happy time described by Edith ended abruptly when her father lost all his money, causing her mother to "die of shock". Her father moved to West Ham, where he remarried and had another family, earning a living as a journalist writing history articles, as well as the odd ghost story. An Essex Mystery published in 1895, is his story based on snippets of history and local legend, and set in Burghstead Lodge. It appears that after his remarriage he lost contact with Edith and her sisters, who presumably went to live with their maternal grandmother until they were old enough to fend for themselves.

The next tenant of Burghstead Lodge was Major General Brydges Robinson Branfill, who moved here after retiring from the army in India, with his wife and family. Like Mr Sparvel-Bayly, he was a Justice of the Peace, an amateur archaeologist, and the father of three young girls: Leila, Blanche and Damaris.

Major General Branfill (he was a modest man and preferred Colonel) was a pillar of the community and worked hard for causes close to his heart. He was particularly interested in Billericay’s water supply, which at that time came from wells, and he took a daily measurement of the rainfall. The local newspapers at this time record many charitable events taking place at Burghstead Lodge. For example, in 1889 the aged women of the workhouse were entertained here for Christmas dinner, and each given a gift of tea and sugar. In 1892, the children of the Sunday school were treated to tea and amusements in the grounds.

Major General Branfill was in poor health and had to have an arm amputated; he eventually died in 1905. His widow and daughters continued living here, and in 1917 Mrs Branfill bought the house.

Mrs Branfill and her daughters continued to use the house and grounds for the benefit of the community and to hold fundraising events for renovations to Great Burstead Church, the local nursing association, and other good causes. After the First World War they allowed the use of the grounds to the newly formed Royal British Legion for their fête. In 1927, Miss Marjorie How, Billericay’s first May Queen, was crowned in the grounds of Burghstead Lodge and presented with a Bible. Damaris in particular took an active part in the bazaars, sales of work, and concerts that took place here before the opening of the Archer Hall in 1930. She was very musical and sang soprano. Damaris did not marry; she continued living with her mother and was a well-known figure in Billericay, especially recognisable riding around in a donkey cart pulled by two donkeys, one in front of the other.

After Mrs Branfill's death in 1935, the house fell into disrepair until it was bought two years later by Mr A. Basil Brooks and his wife Anna. Mr Hugh Cotes rented it from them for two years until he moved to Lockers, and the Brooks moved in to Burghstead Lodge themselves. They were here throughout the Second World War. Mr Brooks was a stockbroker and, like Mr Sparvel-Bayly and Major General Branfill before him, a Justice of the Peace.                                          

During the war, a survey found the lost cellar dug up by Mr Sparvel Bayly and Mr Brooks granted permission to the council for it to be used as an air raid shelter. Minutes of the ARP committee recorded that the air raid shelter would be accessible from the High Street, and that Mr Brooks should be especially thanked. Incidentally, the iron gate and railings at the front of this property, which had recently been repaired in 1937 for £200, somehow escaped being requisitioned for the war effort. The grounds continued to be used for fundraising events. In 1943 a fête was held here by the WVS to raise money for fighter planes during the Second World War.

After the Second World War came a time of great anxiety about the Soviet nuclear threat. A sign, still in place today, above the entrance to the house’s main cellar which the Brooks had made into a private bar, reflects this concern: ‘The Fall-Out Inn’.

In 1952, the Brooks moved to Layer Marney. They sold the land to housing developers; streets such as Everest Rise and Tensing Gardens were named in honour of the British conquest of Mount Everest in 1953. The house itself was leased to Essex County Council, who used it as headquarters for the Civil Defence Corps. This organisation was supposed to come to the rescue in case of a nuclear attack; it attracted a large number of volunteers and organised demonstrations of firefighting and other emergency operations. They came to the rescue during a serious flood in 1958, and used Burghstead Lodge to shelter people who were unable to get home.

Mr and Mrs Brooks died together in 1954, when the fated de Havilland Comet passenger jet they were travelling on crashed into the Mediterranean Sea. As it could not be determined which one of them had pre-deceased the other, probate took a long time to be granted, and led to a legal dispute which drained the estate; Essex County Council became the owner of the house. The case is famous in the legal world because it led to the revised wording in wills which refer to spouses surviving each other by at least twenty-eight days.

When the Civil Defence Corps was disbanded in 1968, Burghstead Lodge was used to house the library, which had previously been in a smaller premises on the High Street. In 1971 the old kitchen building was demolished and a new extension built in its place: this is where the library is today.

Burghstead Lodge itself retains some of its original features such as the imposing oak staircases, fireplaces, and the brick cellar with its steps to the old kitchen that have now been blocked off. Inside the old part of the building is the Registry Office as well as community organizations such as the Street Pastors.

What remains of the garden at the back is overgrown, and the cellar in front that was used as an air raid shelter has been completely blocked off. The upstairs room at the back, which was the scene of Mr Sparvel-Bayly's ghost story, is not easily accessible.

Burghstead Lodge's past grandeur, along with Edith's buried time capsules, has gone into hiding, but beneath the surface and in our imagination, the traces may still be there.

Sian Lang assembled this account from the research for her talk about Burghstead Lodge that she did at the History Fair in the library in October 2024.

Sian’s sources: Books in the library, especially Edith Sparvel-Bayly’s memoir. Materials in the Cater Museum, the British Newspaper Archive, and ancestry records in the Essex Records Office. The Billericay Community Archive website, and conversations with people from the library and Katie from the Cater Museum. Also, Roger Green, who added the bit about the 1954 legal case. (Formerly from Roger Green & Company Solicitors).

The majority of the photographs are from the Cater Museum, and some are from the library's collection.