Many of you will have read novels by Margery Allingham or seen dramatizations on TV; perhaps her most famous series of books feature the quirky detective Albert Campion. Eight of her Campion mysteries were televised in 1989 and 1990 across two series starring Peter Davison as Albert Campion, Brian Glover as his manservant, Magersfontein Lugg, and Andrew Burt as his policeman friend, Stanislaus Oates.

Famously, Margery and her husband Philip 'Pip' Youngman Carter lived in the village of Tolleshunt D'Arcy where in modern times a new development bears her name 'Allingham Close'. Reading Allingham's biography I discover an earlier connection with this area when her parents, both writers and journalists, took the old rectory in Layer Breton (now known as Shalom Hall) from 1909 when Margery was five up to 1917.

The Rectory had been standing empty since the death of the former elderly incumbent and since the church was no longer in use there was no need for accommodation for a clergyman. The Allinghams were the first lessees. Described as spacious and decaying, The Rectory was a Georgian house with a sweeping gravelled drive, outbuildings and stabling with a view to the estuary. It had few modern conveniences, the gardens were overgrown and as little as possible had been spent on it - there were repeated problems with the drains! There was an adjoining house, The Glebe, previously used for the incumbent's servants and this was where the three Allingham children lived, and at the age of seven it was where her parents made Margery an 'office'. Margery described her years there as quiet and lonely and in the winter, the family could be marooned for days.

However, I learned then that to sit by the fire after battening down the house before a tearing blizzard off the sea and to listen to the frustrated howling of the elements is one of the great pleasures in life.

... We were a successful Edwardian family living on the edge of the salt-marshes, taking no notice of our neighbours and keeping our own peculiar hours...

Life was not without its traumas; Margery fell ill with typhoid and her parents lost a baby, who although not in the parish burials register is believed to have been buried in Layer Breton's churchyard. During WW1 the scale of casualties among the young men of Layer Breton and Birch made a deep impression on Margery and upon being warned by Dr. Salter, that invasion was imminent her parents had their children evacuated to a relative further inland in 1916.

Mersea Island became the Allinghams' destination for holidays and they retained a house on Seaview Avenue for some years after they left Layer Breton.

Evenings on Mersea could seem rather slow for those used to London theatres and restaurants. On August 3rd 1921 after the company had left, Margery suggested they amuse themselves by 'trying a glass' a pastime she had learned at 'The Perse' [Margery's School in Cambridge]. This was a rudimentary form of seance involving an upturned tumbler and a set of alphabet cards. (The slaughter of the Great War, and the awful 'flu epidemic had precipitated an interest in spiritualism.) The four who took it up included Margery's father, who made notes as the evening progressed and later wrote up a formal account. In it he claimed that they found themselves in communication with Joseph Pullen, a smuggler who had lived in Mersea two hundred years earlier. They asked him about the old "Ship Inn" at East Mersea and the murder that was said to have been committed there. During that and subsequent sessions, they were convinced they had been given an account of real incidents happening to real people two centuries before. It led them to visit the site of the old Ship Inn, and for Philip to visit the Museum curator in Colchester to find if there was record of the C17th crime. [Mistral Magazine Feb 2005 Sylvia Gower ]

This story became central to the plot of Margery's first novel, Blackkerchief Dick, published in 1923 when she was nineteen. The book-jacket was designed by Pip who was to become Margery's husband in 1929. (The cover below is not that of the first edition).

The action is set at East Mersea in the Ship Inn and the coastal waters off the island at the time of the reign of Charles II. Margery employs a sprinkling of old Mersea names, Pullen, French, and Musset for her characters and demonstrates a knowledge of the history of the local smuggling trade.

The Ship Inn at East Mersea was to become a private house before it was demolished, and its owners and visitors believed it was haunted. Was this down to this novel and its tale of the murder of the young woman, Anny, who worked at the Inn? In later life Margery seems to have become embarrassed by the suggestion she believed it was a 'true story' and she passed it off as pure imagination.

In 1923 Margery wrote "The Sexton's Wife", a ghost story set in Tollesbury and "Hill of the Ancestors" thought to have been inspired by the Mersea Barrow (a Romanh burial mound), although the latter was never published.

Mersea Island would feature in another Allingham novel, the Mystery Mile (1930) - a Campion detective story. Campion had already made his debut as a minor character in The Crime at Black Dudley in 1929 but was to be promoted to the lead character in Mystery Mile.

Mystery Mile is a thinly disguised Mersea Island but Margery sets it in Suffolk instead. Margery described the island as being

... fifteen miles from a railway station, and joined to the mainland by the Stroud only, a narrow road of hard land, the village of Mystery Mile lay surrounded by impassable mudflats and grey-white saltings

It is easy to see why Mersea and the surrounding landscape inspired so many writers. Featuring much of the action on an island cut off from the mainland at high tide with a single road in, The Strood, (spelt 'Stroud' in Mystery Mile), adds to the mystique - and tension - with the creeks, mists, salt-water marshes and pitch-black nights. In Allingham's fictional village there are very few inhabitants, there is a 'mist tunnel' used for concealment - a low area where the marsh mist never lifted - and 'soft mud' which acted like quicksand.

The Strood and The Dog and Pheasant appear in the book but in truth the frontispiece map bears minimal relation to East Mersea, which seems to me to be the inspiration for Mystery Mile.

In 1932 while Margery and Pip were renting Viaduct Farm in Chappel, Essex, Layer Breton's rectory came on the market. Margery's hopes of buying it were not realised for by then the house had become completely dilapidated. The same year their old family friend, Dr. Salter died and in 1935 Margery and Pip were to buy his former home, D'Arcy House, in the heart of Tolleshunt D'Arcy. Later, Dr. Salter was to make an appearance in Margery's 1937 Campion story, Dancers in Mourning, as the larger than life country doctor and magistrate, Dr. Bouverie. This book was made into a series in 1958, the first of Margery's novels to be serialised for TV.

The Youngman Carters' time in D'Arcy is commemorated by a blue plaque put up on the front wall in 1992 - along with another blue plaque commemorating Dr. Salter. They lived there for the rest of their lives, and took an active part in village life, especially in the fete and village cricket team. Famously, the Duke of Edinburgh played at one of Pip's cricket matches in 1949, a 'celebrities' versus 'locals' match!

During the War, Margery was appointed Billeting Officer for Tolleshunt D'Arcy while her husband served in North Africa and the Middle East and, in 1941, her book 'The Oaken Heart the story of an English village at war', was published. Giving an account of village life in wartime this book details the preparations for and arrival of over a hundred evacuees from London, many mothers and babies. It provides a fascinating study of life in Tolleshunt D'Arcy at the time (called Auburn in the book) - probably very similar experiences to those of the people who lived in all the nearby villages. It was Margery's sister who in later years gave the 'key' to all the place-names in the Oaken Heart.

Margery was also set to act as the local agent of a British Resistance, should such a movement have become a reality in the event of a German invasion. D'Arcy House became a temporary military base for eight officers and two hundred men of the Cameronians. Weapons and explosives were stored in the grounds and emergency food supplies in the garage.

It was Margery's crime writing that she is most remembered for and after the war Margery's books became even more popular. In 1951 she was voted one of the best ten mystery writers. Her book, 'Tiger in the Smoke', published in 1952 was made into a film in 1956, starring Bernard Miles and Donald Sinden. In 1959, Margery won the Crime Writers' Award for her novel 'Hide my Eyes'.

Margery Allingham died on 30th June 1966 and is buried at the church in Tolleshunt D'Arcy. She had published 30 novels.

Not unsurprisingly, being born into a literary family, Margery's brother, Philip Allingham, was also an author, writing an autobiographical book about his time working as a 'grafter' and fortune teller at fairs up and down the country before WW2. Philip too had lived in The Rectory at Layer Breton as a child and was a visitor to D'Arcy House. Philip's book 'Cheapjack' was an instant best seller when it first appeared in 1934, the first edition's cover painted by his brother-in-law, Pip. The book, whose subtitle reads 'Being the true History of a Young Man's Adventures as a Fortune-Teller, Grafter, Knocker-Worker and Mounted Pitcher on the Market-Places and Fairgrounds of a Modern but still Romantic England' was hailed as 'an astonishing autobiography of an English gentleman turned county fair mountebank' and is well worth seeking out.

Margery Allingham by Howard Coster 1942.
Photo copyright National Portrait Gallery, obtained under Creative Commons License.
See www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw48022/Margery-Allingham?LinkID=mp54521&search=sas&sText=margery+allingham&role=sit&rNo=12

Elaine Barker
Peldon History Project
elainebarker500@gmail.com

Sources:
Mistral Magazine February 2005 Sylvia Gower
Margery Allingham: A Biography Julia Thorogood

Other local literary connections
John Goodwin alias Sidney David Gowing
Alfred Ludgater
Dora McChesney
E. Arnot Robertson