Great Baddow
| Great Baddow | |
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 Great Baddow
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| Great Baddow shown within Essex | |
| Population | 14,650 (2011 Census) |
| OS grid reference | TL731052 |
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| District | |
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| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | Chelmsford |
| Postcode district | CM2 |
| Dialling code | 01245 |
| Police | Essex |
| Fire | Essex |
| Ambulance | East of England |
| EU Parliament | East of England |
Great Baddow is an urban village and civil parish in the Chelmsford borough of Essex, England. It is close to the county town, Chelmsford and, with a population of over 13,000, is one of the largest villages in the country.
Great Baddow's name is believed to have been derived from the River Beadwan, now known as the River Chelmer, which marks the northern boundary of the village. Beadwan is thought to be a Celtic word of uncertain meaning, possibly "birch stream" or a reference to the goddess Badbh. The centre of Great Baddow is now a Conservation Area and contains over 30 listed buildings.
During the early part of the 20th century, Great Baddow grew through ribbon development towards Chelmsford and Galleywood. In 1936, Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company opened the Marconi Research Laboratory in Great Baddow (now BAE Systems Applied Intelligence Laboratories), bringing together their various radio, television and telephony research teams in a single location. As the electronics industry developed the campus expanded during the 1940s and 1950s to include research into radar, general physics, high voltage, vacuum physics and semiconductors. Great Baddow expanded considerably in the 1950s with the construction of Rothmans Estate, which provided housing for workers at Marconi's and English Electric Valve Company in Chelmsford. The village has continued to expand over subsequent years.
The Vineyards, located in the centre of the old village, was once a fine Georgian house set in attractive wooded grounds which later became a hotel. It was demolished in the mid 1960s prior to the advent of conservation legislation, to make way for the construction of the Vineyards shopping centre and later the Marrable House office block, both constructed with a 'scale, form, layout and architecture' that Chelmsford Council now considers to 'jar with its historic surroundings'. Despite this the shopping centre continues to thrive and, since refurbishment in the 2000s, the flats above are highly regarded and sought after properties. Marrable House, described at the time of its construction in 1968 as 'one of the worst examples of town and country planning in the country' and subsequently once voted as one of England's ugliest buildings, was demolished in the Spring of 2016, and will be replaced with a 53 flat development made up of one to two bedrooms in two new buildings to be named Heron Gate by Weston Homes PLC which are due to be finished around February 2018 . A corner of the grounds of the former Vineyards mansion were retained and form a green area to the west of the Vineyards development. A library was also opened on the western edge of the development in September 1981, replacing the former building in Bell Street.
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