A Brief History

1407 – 1911

The first recorded owner of the land that can now be identified as being part of the Gilwell estate was back in 1407 was a one John Crow who owned several parcels of land in the old Parish of Waltham Abbey, Essex and called this land Gyldiefords. This record can be found in the Harleian records which can be found in the British Library.

In 1422 the Court record show the ownership had changed to a Richard Rolfe but there is no record as to when this change of ownership actually took place, but the records show that on his death he had left Gillrolfes, an 8 acre estate, as it was now known to his family. Rolfe had changed the name to his own family name as was quite common in those days and added Gill to the front and old English word for Glen. Shortly after Rolfe’s death the land was divided into two field areas known as Great Gilwell & Little Gilwell (well comming from the Old English Wella meaning spring). At the same time Richard Osborne purchased the adjacent land and built a house called Osborne Hall that now stands on the site of the “White House” (more about this later). The house was not has grand as the “White House”, but was of considerable size and well constructed because it remained standing for the next 300 years.

Over the next 250 years the estate changed hands many times and apart from the occasional increase or decrease in a few “roods of land” (Old English word for a quarter of an acre) very little changed.

In or around 1736 Gilwell crossed paths with the infamous Highwayman “Dick Turpin”, Legend has it he actually hid in the forest the borders Gilwell as well as the caves at High Beech near by. The connection with Gilwell come in the way that on the far side of Gilwell Green there stood some wooden huts & cottages that belonged to estate workers of the neighbouring estate of Lord Sewardson and it was in one of these cottages the Turpin’s young bride Ester Palmer lived and that his son was born in.

In 1754 the estate grew again when William Skrimshire of London purchased a number of parcels of land including Great & Little Gilwell and half of Osborne’s land including the land the hall stood on. The total purchase was 23 acres. It is thought this around the time the “White House” was built as timbers in the building have been dated to around this time so it is assumed that Skrimshire demolished Osborne Hall and built what is know called the “Whit House”. By 1771 the land had been sold to Lenord Tresilan along with another 3 arces which by 1778 had with a purchase of an traditional 8 acres had increased the size of the Estate to 34 acres.

The land changed hands a number of times until it came into the ownership of William Gibbs in 1858, The Gibbs family thou not poor ended up not having the money needed to keep the estate in it’s former high standard and slowly the estate started to full into disrepair. When Gibbs died in 1900 is window and children moved out of the main hall and into the gardeners cottages, In 1905 Mrs Gibbs decided to move, while the eldest son remained and in 1907 he sold off the northern most 8 arces of land known as “Gillwellbury estate”, He lived on the farm untill 1911 when this was sold to a Reverand Cranshaw.