Volume I - Little Baddow History Centre

There were at various times comparatively wealthy tenants who held from the lords a
number of tenements. Notable among these was the Pledger family who came to the
village in the mid-seventeenth century and during the eighteenth century acquired
farms and land and also many cottages, presumably to house their farm-workers. The
period of their chief prosperity was probably around 1800, but in 1851, when their
homes were at Hammonds and Holybreds, they were farming a total of 860 acres,
spread throughout the parish, employing 50 labourers and still holding many cottages.
Their influence in the parish often rivalled that of the lords of the manors, whose
supremacy was in any case on the decline from the privileged days of the Middle
Ages.
THE LAND
Sketch
There are no documents to say who were the pioneers in clearing the land and
building the houses, nor who were their successors, nor what crops they grew or
animals they reared.
By about 1300 however, when surnames were becoming universal and hereditary, a
few names do emerge from the obscurity. John le Taillur died in 1305 holding land in
Little Baddow direct from the Crown, and long afterwards in 1494 John Balsham and
others held the land “called Taillours”, by then in Bassetts manor. The Balsham
family, who were in the village from at least 1383, no doubt gave their name to the
farm known as Balshams. On the other hand John de Wickey of c.1300 must have
taken his name from the place where he lived – Wickhay Green – and it became a
surname which remained in the parish for at least the next century. Perhaps he or his
family built the original house called Wickhays. In 1387 a John Hammond witnessed
a deed relating to Graces manor and he or one of his family could have given their
name to the farm in Graces manor still called Hammonds. It is rare, from early Tudor
times until the nineteenth century, that a later family changed the name of a house;
most retained their names for centuries. In 1490 Joan Bastwick in her will referred to
“this place that I dwelle In called Bubbs otherwise called Bastwykis”, but the
Bastwick sojourn there was soon forgotten in favour of the earlier occupiers, of whom
almost the only record is a name attached to a house now long since demolished.
Field names generally did not last as long as house names. Mediaeval names such as
helveslond, leylond, Chericroft, bricideslond, brekecroft, le Close and Chornehope
had been forgotten by the time the 1677 map was compiled. Others were slightly
altered, such as Purifeeld which must have become Perry fields (perhaps where pears
were grown) and Morefeldes which had apparently become Moarefeilde and Puttoks
Taile (Kite’s tail) by 1677. Few fields were named after their owners – those like
Nevells fields, Pledgers piece, Dukes orchard and Ketchers field are exceptional.
Many field names were descriptive, such as (in 1677) Small Gaines, Sawpit Feilde,
Pound Feilde, Gravell pitt Feilde, Haystack Feilde, Barne Feilde, Church Feilde,
Greate Mill Feilde, Broome Feilde, Paretree Feilde, Stoney Downes, Moulehill
Meade, Washhowse and Clothhedge Feildes.
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