Wickford

Wickford was cloud shrouded when I first arrived. Dark thunderheads with low bellies drooped over the rooftops of the high street. Not the kind of weather you’d expect on a mild Wednesday morning in May. Though, in a way, it was fitting: Wickford, I was to discover, is full of surprises.

The town is not big with a population of roughly – 34 000. Though this is set to go up: developments are being built around the centre at quite a pace. However it is a far cry from 1901 when the population was registered as 638. At its centre lies a compact high street, well-serviced by cafes and a range of shops – butchers, supermarkets, stationers. There’s a market on Saturdays, and the town is on the mainline to Liverpool Street, Southend Airport and Southend. This, it seems, has pro’s and cons. One of the pro’s is it’s a good place to commute to the City. Many Londoners, it seems, are moving to Wickford as a consequence of the astronomic house prices in the Smoke. However, one of the cons is – it’s a good place to commute to the city. As, a resident I spoke to during my residency with Creative Basildon, explained, ‘The trains take people out of the town. They don’t bring them in. People live here, work up in the city and then come back to sleep. London has got so much to offer in terms of bars, restaurants and cafes, they socialise there. They don’t really go out or become part of the community here.’ This was a theme that recurred in my interviews with the townsfolk, who I came across. I was fortunate to be hosted by the wonderful team at Wickford Library who introduced me to various groups that meet there, local characters who potter in to pass the time of day and a whole host of users who were happy to talk to me about their relationship with Wickford.

Just like many communities all over the world Wickford has been flattened and shattered by the hammer of the Pandemic. But was clear that in this town there was a real will and desire to go out and reconnect.

Over the weeks of my residency many people lamented that there weren’t places to meet each other. To be honest, this wasn’t a surprise. On my very first day when those ominous storm clouds opened, I took shelter in an eaterie on the high street. ‘What is there to do in Wickford?’ I asked my waitress. ‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘What about the pubs?’ ‘No, none that I would go to.’ I thought perhaps it was the atmosphere of the day that had depressed her responses, but as I investigated further I found it to be a sentiment that echoed throughout the town. Yes, there is a new community centre, which is used for certain events, but some felt it was too formal or ‘too council’ for regular meet ups. A few pubs dot the high street, The Duke, which is viewed as a family pub, and The Swan, which is historic but slightly hostile to newcomers and could do with a bit of TLC. Many spoke of a desire to just chill out somewhere with like-minds. Others talked about how they met for clubs, group lunches and jazz outside of Wickford, pointing out that this often meant that you had to drive there and back so couldn’t relax and have a drink. If you did (or you couldn’t drive or didn’t have a car) this also meant additional costs in taxi fares as buses are being cut and trains stop running at night.

Don’t get me wrong – there’s a lot of love out there for Wickford too. People told me it was pretty and surrounded by gorgeous countryside. However, another word used to describe the centre several times was ‘soulless’.

Personally, I don’t think that’s right. Wickford has got an old soul. Residents were eager to tell me it had appeared in the Doomsday book. In my research I found that its roots went back as far as 54 B.C.E when Cassivelaunus lived here. He was a military leader and chief of the Trinobantes, a Celtic tribe, and, unlike the very welcoming contemporary Wickfordians, made his name fighting the invading Romans. He has had quite an impact on the British consciousness and appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain), and also in the Mabinogion, one of the earliest British prose stories. There was speculation that he might have known the famous Queen Boudicca, whose stamping ground was up in North Essex. Though I think this unlikely as our prototype Essex warrior torched the Roman city of Colchester around A.D 60 or 61, about a hundred years after Casivelaunus saw off Julius Caesar. What we do know is that the Romans did eventually conquer Wickford: the remains of their old settlement are buried under the bottom of Beauchamps Drive.

In 314 A.D. Wickford was part of a Christian community, which was supervised by the Bishop of London, at the time a certain Restitus. This, I found particularly intriguing after meeting, Gwen at a MYOTUS event at Bartlett’s Park. For those of you who aren’t aware of the charity, MYOTAS is an outstanding Wickford-based organisation who do amazing work supporting autistic/adhd and neurodiverse children and their families. Gwen was there with her daughter, Emma, who delivers art projects with the charity. While we were chatting Gwen asked me if I had heard of the Running Well mysteries? I hadn’t and asked her to tell me more. ‘The Running Well has been here a long time. Some people think that’s where Runwell (part of Wickford) got its name from. It’s a natural source of water and is in a field somewhere in one of the farmers’ lands. On Boxing Day people meet at the Quart Pot and walk up to it. It happens every year. It’s meant to be sacred.’

As the author of the Essex Witch Museum Mysteries, I have an antenna for the wyrd and strange and at that point it started buzzing intensely. Gwen packed me off with another story which I’ll save for later, and a slew of references to look up. Needless to say, by the time I got home I had already googled the Running Well and stayed up into the early hours reading. The Running Well is indeed still in north Wickford, though accessed with difficulty. It is rumoured to have been dedicated to the Celtic goddess Epona, who some say was a water deity. The Roman goddess of the same name is the protector of ponies, horses, donkeys and mules and is depicted as riding a horse. A local writer, Andrew Collins, has written a book about the well and conducted a huge amount of research into its history. If you want to find out more, Wickford Library still have a copy. Collins refers to the writings of the parish priest Rev. John Edward Bazille-Corbin who arrived in Runwell in 1923. Bazille-Corbin stated that in the Sixth Century A.D. Christian missionaries Lucus and Lucilus visited Essex and found a scene of extreme uncouth paganism – and they hadn’t even been down Southend High Street on a Saturday night. Shocked by this level of heathenism they immediately started preaching the good word and set about Christianising the Running Well. In the time-honoured fashion of ‘streamlining’ they made Epona redundant and replaced her with “Our Lady St Mary” who performed a similar function. To concrete this new goddess into the culture they built a chapel dedicated to her, where six nuns lived to look after the well. It must have been quite impressive at the time - allegedly its floor was designed with a very unusual cross at its centre made of “black flint and red strawberry stone”. In 1602 it was noted in the parish records by the then rector, Roberet Dureden, who described it as : ‘the schrine of the Bl. Virgin of the Runnynge Welle’. At some point after this it fell into disrepair, which is a shame. There are many stories of miracles that occurred there and some tragedies too: the path that leads up to the site is said to be haunted by a white lady and a lone horse (a residual memory of Epona?), while the well itself is visited by the spectre of a nun, who died in its icy waters. I could go on as this is just the tip of the iceberg. Like I said, there is so much more to Wickford.

Just down the road, for instance, lies St Mary’s church, with another crazy legend. According to Gwen, ‘the monk or priest who was there dabbled in the dark arts. One day he conjured the devil. He appeared and raced around the church. The priest managed to get him out by the North door, but as he closed it on him, the Devil slapped it with his hand. The Devil’s handprint remains there to this day.’ The priest was called Rainaldus. I’d come across him before in ye olde tales of Essex legend and skulduggery although, in my mind, I had associated him with a church in Pitsea. But Gwen was right, he was the vicar of St Mary’s, and as she says attracted the attentions of the Devil. Other renderings of the legend at a bit more to the story – that just before he slapped the door the Devil lunged for Rainaldus. At this point, rather frightened, the rest of the parishioners ran out of the south door, where the Devil was not allowed to pass, slammed it shut and locked both he and Rainaldus into the church. Outraged not only did the Devil vandalise the door, he also vented his anger and (kind of weirdly) turned the priest into a puddle of steaming liquid. When the villagers returned they found the remains of the priest had condensed into a small stone with his features imprinted on one side. Weirder still - if you want to see this stone it is called The Coin of Rainaldus and can be viewed in Southend Museum.

St Mary’s also harbours another tragedy. In 1913 the Mental Deficiency Act enabled unmarried mothers to be classified as “moral imbeciles” and sent to lunatic asylums. Rumours abound locally that such women from Runwell Asylum are buried in unmarked graves in one of the corners there.

The practice of committing ‘fallen women’ to asylums (why do we never hear of ‘fallen’ men?) is now well known thanks to films such as the Magdalena Sisters. The Mental Deficiency Act was not repealed until 1959 and a former psychiatric nurse, who worked at the hospital, told me that when she was there in the 1990s she met women in their eighties who had been committed by their families and never released. They lived and died there forgotten and unwanted, stigmatised by shame. The same nurse also told me Runwell Hospital had the largest collection of human brains in Europe. One wonders from whom they came?

But not all notable women of Wickford were victims. Bob Plimmer of the Wickford Community Archive, told me about Marion Wilberforce. She was one of the first women pilots in the Second World War. Marion flew a range of planes from Spitfires and Hurricanes to twin-engined aircraft such as the Wellington and Mosquito and heavy bombers such as Lancasters. She made her way up the Air Transport Auxillary (ATA) to become Deputy Commander of the No. 5 Ferry Pool at Hatfield, then finally Commander at Cotsford, one of only two women pool commanders. Marion served a full 5 years until the ATA was disbanded at the end of the war.

There are plans afoot to commemorate Wilberforce with a blue plaque. And there are certainly other candidates for such memorials to be found in Bob’s extensive Wickford Community Archive: Audrey Pegrum received an MBE for tireless charity work, a Mrs Wrenwas thought to be one of very few lady chimney sweeps. And there was Ken Worzburger. He was a sixteen year old German jew who arrived in England from Germany, just nine days before the Second World War started. Unfortunately, his parents were murdered in a concentrations camp. Ken found work as a tailor making army uniforms and, wishing to help the war effort, spent his nights on the roofs of London buildings, fire watching. In 1943 when the Army allowed foreigners to join he volunteered for the Royal Tank Regiment becoming a tank wireless operator. According to the Wickford Community Archive, ‘He took part in D day, on the 6th of June 1945, and landed on Gold Beach in France, as part of the crew of a Firefly tank. After surviving four tank explosions he finally finished up in Berlin as an interpreter, working for the Military Police, tracking down German war criminals.’ What a testimony.

The archive is full of such historical gems and strange facts - who knew that Alvin Stardust’s mum ran the Chalet Cafe near Wickford railway station? Or that Morten Harkett did the Wickford fun run two years in a row? Dr Clive Bruton worked on boxers’ brains and how they were affected by their sport, which resulted in amateur boxers wearing protective head gear. Edward Bentley was a notorious Wickford horse burker (murderer) who in February 1847 was sentenced to 15 years’ transportation. The list goes on.

Yes, Wickford is has its issues and, like other places could do with some investment in the community to become whole again. But its souls is expansive, unique, eclectic, ancient and generous too. And of course, a town’s soul is its people. Wickfordians should feel very proud.