Gidea Hall

About

Gidea Hall was a manor house in Gidea Park, in the historic Royal Liberty of Havering, whose former area today is part of the north-eastern extremity of Greater London.

The first record of Gidea Hall is in 1250, and by 1410 it was in the hands of one Robert Chichele. In 1452 Sir Thomas Cooke (c.1410-1478), a Lord Mayor of London, bought the estate and in 1466 was granted a licence to crenellate, which is a licence for the manor house to be fortified. Gidea Hall was forfeit when Cooke was accused of treason, but he was acquitted and the property recovered after payment of a fine. While work on the manor had started in 1466 with the construction of a moat, they were continued by his son Sir Anthony Cooke, one of whose daughters married Sir Nicholas Bacon and came into possession of the Manor of Marks, another large house in the Liberty of Havering. After his return from exile Cooke entertained Queen Elizabeth I at Gidea Hall during her Progress in 1568 when she also visited Copt Hall The final alterations to Gidea Hall were not finished until 1568 at which time the main house and two adjacent wings formed three sides of a courtyard with an open colonnade on the fourth side and various outbuildings. Maria de Medici, the mother-in-law of King Charles I stayed at Gidea Hall in 1638 on her way from Harwich to London, although by then the hall was falling into decay. By the time of the Commonwealth the buildings were ruinous, but were not finally demolished until 1720 when Sir John Eyles had a new mansion built on the site.