Basildon Development Corporation wants to preserve the hall. A new master plan to boost the town's target population shows the hall standing in the centre of a small park with games areas and woodlands.

     The corporation deputy estates officer Mr. Alan Radford, told me: "This was defined with the specific intention that the hall should be preserved in a setting suitable to such a significant property."

     So the future looks hopeful for Great Chalvedon Hall, which is on the Ministry list of protected buildings.

     The owners are Mr. and Mrs. Peter Croft. Five years ago they moved in and repaired the neglect of time. Structurally the house is very sound, and though its floors of elm tilt and slope in places the building has now settled into this position.

     An enormous central chimney-stack dominates the building. Four vast old fireplaces lead into it and over the main fireplace is a moulded and cambered head. Throughout the hall are exposed timbers. Behind them at the top of the staircase is a secret room, a priest-hole hiding place.

     Like many other manors, the Hall has its folklore. Tradition says that an underground passage links it with Little Chalvedon Hall, a mile away at Bowers Gifford, and a woman haunts a room at the east end of the house.

     "But we have not seen her," Mrs. Croft said. "We leave a drink for her on Christmas Eve, but it is always still there, untouched, in the morning."

     Mr. and Mrs. Croft are determined to keep the character of their ancient home. They had tiles and oak beams taken from the smouldering remains of another Basildon manor house when it was burned down by vandals. They have also looked up the history of their home.

     Chalvedon estate - then much larger - was owned by the prior of St. Mary's Hospital without Bishopsgate and held under Robert Fitzwalter, who died in 1386. It is not certain how much ground at Pitsea was in the hands of the prior at the time of the suppression.

     King Henry VIll granted the manor to Thomas Lord Cromwell. After his attainder it reverted to the same king, who assigned it as part of the maintenance of his daughter, Princess Mary, before she came to the throne.

     Queen Elizabeth gave the estate to Thomas Duke of Norfolk, in February 1562, but it was forteited when Norfolk lost his head for his connection with Mary Queen of Scots.

     Later, however, Chalvedon was restored to Norfolk's son, Thomas Lord Howard. He was created Earl of Suffolk in July 1603. Afterwards the estate - which by then included the present hall - came into the hands of the Prescot family, of Mountnessing.

     Now, having survived some years of neglect, Great Chalvedon Hall is a well restored old mansion and an asset to the new town. One item the Croft's have brought to it is an old stone fireplace which was in a similar historic building now demolished; but fears that development may mean a second move for the fireplace seem groundless.

Footnote: The future looks hopeful for Great Chalvedon Hall, Pitsea, which has now been restored. This early-sixteenth-century manor house is to be preserved in a small park when the area is developed by the Basildon Development Corporation.

Title: An Historic Home in a New Town by Rodney Legg.

Copyright: © Rodney Legg, 1967.

Comments: This account was first published in an unknown publication and is reproduced complete and unedited.

1) The article also included two black and white photographs. These were captioned: 'Part of the early-sixteenth century mansion Great Chalvedon Hall at Pitsea, which will be incorporated in Basildon new town' and 'Great Chalvedon Hall seen from a pond in the grounds.' Both photographs were taken by Don McPhee.

2) The author, Rodney Legg, from Dorset, in the year of this article had been working as a reporter for the Basildon Standard newspaper. He worked for the 'Standard' for four years in what was his first paid job, possibly leaving in 1967 around the time that the newspaper merged with the Basildon Recorder. He then returned to his native Dorset where he continued to pursue a writing career until his death in 2011.

3) The Basildon Standard newspaper merged with the Basildon Recorder following the Recorder's final edition on 19th April, 1967.

4) The 1940s built council prefabricated properties which stood in the former Cromwell Gardens were later replaced with new housing.