Marshalls (house)

Marshalls was a house, located in Romford in the historic parish and Royal liberty of Havering, whose former area today forms the north eastern extremity of Greater London, England. The name Marshalls dates back to 1213 when Gilbert, son of Roger Marschal is recorded as leasing land in Havering to the house of Canons at St Bernard, and in 1321 Richard le Marescall owned land near the eventual site of the house. Marshalls was situated roughly where the playground of the current St Edwards' C of E Primary school is now, and at its greatest the surrounding estate was approximately bounded by the modern roads of Main Road, North Street, Pettits Lane, and Pettits Boulevard.

There is no record of any particularly grand or notable property associated with Marshalls. By about 1610 it was described as a messuage with 40 acres and was still described as “that messuage or tenement commonly called or known by the name Marshalls” in 1746. The house was considerably improved by Jackson Barwis, the High Sheriff of Essex, who lived there until his death in 1809. It is essentially this house that Pevsner in his book on Essex describes as having a "stuccoed Georgian five-bay front (Tuscan porch) and gabled back parts", while the sale catalogue from 1816 describes it as “A plain neat edifice, brick, extremely well erected...(with)...a portico entrance to the principal or ground storey....”. The house was demolished in 1959 as it was “not of historical or architectural value”.

As described above, Gilbert Marschal leased land in Havering to the Augustinian Canons of the Hospice of St Bernard in Switzerland, of which nearby Hornchurch Priory was a dependency. The land continued in the family into the 14th Century and then passed to the Carew family. Edward Carew son of John Carew, the deputy Steward of the Royal Libery of Havering, is recorded as a past owner in 1610; at this date the property belonged to a “gentleman named Thorowgood”, probably George Thorowgood who owned Hornchurch Hall. On 20 January 1694 Simon Thorowgood leased Marshalls to Thomas Scawen, but then sold the property to Russell Alsopp in 1704. When Alsopp died he owed much money to Sir William Scawen, Governor of the Bank of England from 1697 to 1699 and there followed a lengthy legal argument over ownership of the property.

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