PELDON IN ESSEX

Village over
the Marshes.
by
KAY GILMOUR

England has greater countries -
Their peace to hers is small.
Low hills, rich fields, calm rivers
In Essex seek them all.

  Lyre Evangelistica, Essex

  Rev. Arthur Shearly Cutts.

This shire is moste fatt, frutefull, and full of profitable thinges, exceeding (as farr as I can finde) anie other shire, for the generall comodeties, and the plentie... this shire seemeth to me to deserve the title of the englishe Goshen, the fattest of the Lande: comparable to Palestine, that flowed with milke and hunnye...
Ther are in this shire some especiall groundes noted generallie, in regard of their fertilletie, by this comon Rime or Proverbe.

Lorde Morleyes Baron parke is fruitfull and fatt:
In Layr Marney pk - How feild is better then that:
In Wigboro - Copte hall is beste of them all;
  Parcell of Peldo hall
  Yet Hubbledown
  may wayr the crowne.

  Essex described by John Norden 1595

CONTENTS

FOREWORD by J.A.S. Trydell.

AUTHOR'S FOREWORD

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FOREWORD
by J.A.S. Trydell

The author of this book, Kay Gilmour, born Kate Finzi on 28th February 1890, the only daughter of John Finzi, ship-broker, was the eldest child of a talented family, the youngest of whom was the late Gerald Finzi, the composer.

Born and brought up in London she attended schools in Bayswater and Brighton, going on later to Cheltenham Ladies College. In 1914 she was among the first women to go out to France to serve in a Voluntary Aid Detachment as a nurse under the British Red Cross. After a period of sick leave and convalescence she returned to France, this time to work with the Y.M.C.A. A vivid account of her experiences is given in her first book Eighteen Months in the War Zone, published in 1916.

In 1918 she married Major Alexander Gilmour, who fought in France in the Royal Artillery, and among the many places she afterwards lived was Hull, where she wrote under the pen-name of 'Pandora' for the Yorkshire Evening Post. In 1930 she made a journey to Finland and a result of her visit there was her informative book on that country published in 1931.

She finally settled in Essex, to which county she had been greatly attracted, particularly by the vicinity of the River Blackwater with its estuary. and long salt marshes stretching along its banks. Here, in the village of Peldon, she found the home of her heart within sight of the sea and the marshes, an old cottage reputed to have been built in the fifteenth century.

Living there in 1939 when war broke out she soon found herself working for the Y.M.C.A., supervising a large area on the East Coast, visiting the women at lonely gun-sites and organising the rest rooms. She was also hostess to the Land Army girls living in the hostel at Peldon.

After the war she settled down again, this time to write Committee Procedure, published in 1950, a useful little book described so aptly in the Times Literary Supplement as a "committee man's vade-mecum" and in the Local Government Journal as "a ready source of reference and adjudication on points of doubt and dispute".

Elected to the Peldon Parish Council, she served for a period as chairman of it and was also the founder and first president of the Peldon Village Women's Institute, the status of women being an important factor in her life. In Colchester she was elected a patron of the Old Contemptibles Association an office of which she was particularly proud, and was a member of the local branch of the Business and Professional Women's Club. She was also instrumental in originating the Colchester Literary Society and was for a time chairman of its committee.

Kay Gilmour was a woman of great vitality, possessing an active mind with a wide range of interests and a high sense of public service.

Unfortunately she did not live to complete the writing of this work, the narrative of an Essex village to which she had given much time and labour. At her decease she left a sum of money for the building of a new village hall at Peldon and it is hoped that in this her memory will be perpetuated and cherished for years to come.

March 2024

Just two copies of the manuscript of Kay Gilmour's book, PELDON IN ESSEX Village Over the Marshes exist, in the Local Studies Department of Colchester library. Bill and Naomi Tamblyn, who moved into the village in 1984, stumbled across a copy in the library and decided that it was too vulnerable to just be available through the loan section of the library system. They began systematically scanning in the text and re-typing it. In due course they contacted The Peldon History Project (formed in 2015) who judged it was a matter of urgency that this unpublished and important type-written manuscript should be transcribed onto computer and made available for all to read.

Kay Gilmour died on 24th April 1958 at 8, East Hill, Colchester at the home of a friend who she appointed to be one of her executors, Captain John A S Trydell. Trydell was to write the foreword to Kate's history of Peldon after her death and we presume had the two copies of the manuscript bound and donated to Colchester library.

Described by Trydell as 'unfinished', the book, we feel, was in draft form awaiting proof-reading and corrections. Dates, references and spellings of names have been checked and a small numbers of 'typos' and changes to grammar made. A few editorial notes have been added and the notes and bibliography expanded. Many thanks to Tony Millatt from Mersea Museum for his work in making the manuscript available on-line.

Chapter 1

Peldon History Project
More Peldon History.