| The Adder Man of Langenhoe
In July 1937, Patience Allen née Brundle, died in Wayside Cottage, Peldon at the age of 92. A native of Suffolk, her parents had kept the Queen's Head Hotel in the village of Eye and it was there Patience married Edwin Samuel Allen, son of a farmer living in the same village. In about 1884 the Allens moved to Langenhoe Wick, Samuel taking a post as a stockman and gamekeeper and later a similar post at Langenhoe Hall.
In 1901 the family was to be found in Capons Elm on the Colchester to Mersea Road, then probably a pair of labourers' cottages, now a large detached residence. After nineteen years in Langenhoe, Patience and Samuel settled in Peldon where he died in 1912. Patience was a staunch churchwoman and she retained her connection with Langenhoe Church as long as she could until old age meant she was unable to make the journey there. However she still followed the Sunday morning service in imagination turning up the Collect, proper to the day.
One of the Allens' sons was Ted Allen who, having lived on the marsh since a year old (and carrying a gun from the age of six) was to stay living and working on the Langenhoe Marshes. He was a consummate countryman, having spent his childhood days roaming the countryside, absorbing a knowledge of all wild things and how to survive on the land.
Becoming a friend of James Wentworth Day, celebrated author and countryman, Ted became the subject of much of Wentworth Day's writing and was to broadcast for BBC radio as 'The Essex Marshman'.
Douglas Went photograph from 'Farming Adventure' by James Wentworth Day
Ted, born Edwin Samuel in Suffolk in 1883, married Anna Rebekah Gladwell, in St. Mary's Church, Peldon in 1903. In the 1911 census they could be found with their son Wilfred, aged 6, in Hall Gate Cottages, Langenhoe, and Ted was to work as a gamekeeper for the Hall.
Anna's father, Thomas Chenery (or Chinery) Gladwell was a thatcher in Peldon and his descendants still live in the village today (2023).
Wentworth Day describes how, in those days, the Langenhoe marshes were infested with adders and no one dared walk or graze stock there. But Ted, known as 'The Adderman', would catch them alive with his foot or a forked stick and sell them to hospitals at half a crown each to make anti-snakebite serum. He himself had been bitten often, "his hands criss crossed with tiny blue marks where the fangs have entered", but seemingly had suffered no ill effects, and locals who had been bitten would turn to him for help. "It was not unusual for him to be visited by someone to have a bite nicked [with the blade of his knife] and sucked and tobacco rubbed in."
Ted Allen - a Douglas Went photograph
Ted's wildfowling and rabbiting supplemented war-time rations for family, friends and neighbours who might also find a few wild mushrooms or a basket of raspberries on the doorstep.
After his day's work Ted would go back to his cottage and his wife, described by a neighbour as a "dear old lady", then return "looking very spruce, his moustache trimmed, his tweeds and polo-necked sweater and gaitered legs giving him a most dapper appearance." Accompanied by one of his dogs he would make his way to a neighbouring field where he shot his nightly bag of rabbits.
Ted remained in Hall Gate Cottages until his death in 1951 and was buried in Langenhoe Churchyard. Although Langenhoe Church is long gone the graveyard remains.
Based on an article by Elaine Barker which appeared in the Courier in 2023.
Read More
Ted Allen. Personally Speaking by James Wentworth Day
Elaine Barker
Mersea Museum
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