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Brentwood Leasing

Did You Know?

The early history of Brentwood is obscure. A Bronze Age axe has been found in the district and there is an entrenched camp in Weald Park. However, it is unlikely that early man settled on the site of the town because it was probably part of the Great Forest which covered much of Essex.

The year 1588 saw the country in great peril from the Spanish Armada, and soldiers were dispatched to Brentwood in readiness. Again in 1597 when Philip II, spurred by the sack of Cadiz by the Earl of Essex, threatened invasion, there was a muster of militia at Brentwood.

Brentwood's name is derived from 'Burnt Wood', referring to a clearing made in the dense forest covering this part of Essex by a fire. Over time, it became a stopping point for pilgrims travelling to Canterbury and the remains of a 12th Century chapel in the town centre bear testimony to this.

One such pub was The White Hart One of the oldest buildings in Brentwood Essex; it is believed to have been built in 1480 although apocryphal evidence suggests a hostelry might have stood on the site as much as a hundred years earlier and been visited in 1392 by Richard II, whose coat of arms included a White Hart.

Brentwood Essex School was founded in 1557 and established in 1558, in Ingrave Road and behind the greens on Shenfield Road by Sir Anthony Browne and the site of Hunter's execution in commemorated by a plaque in the school.

The fledging medieval town became popular with pilgrims travelling from the north and east of England on their quest to worship at the shrine of St Thomas à Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. Brentwood’s then parish church was in South Weald, some distance from the streets of what is now the town’s centre.

Royalty passed through Brentwood in the 1390s when King Richard II and his entourage made their pilgrimage through the town on his way to worship at Canterbury Cathedral. He rested at an inn in the High Street and his personal emblem, the white hart, became the name for that inn.

In the 19th and early 20th century, the High Street in Brentwood housed at least 10 public houses and inns; most of which have long since been demolished or converted into shops. One that is still present today is the Swan Inn. Originally known as the Gun, the Swan has been rebuilt several times over the centuries. 

Unfortunately, many of the town’s Victorian shops and public buildings were demolished last century. One such building that is now lost was Brentwood’s Victorian Town Hall, built in 1864 at the London Road end of the High Street at a cost of £1,800 to replace the old Elizabethan Assize House.

Brentwood also has a dark past. In the 1890s, a scandal broke at the Hackney Industrial Training School in the town’s London Road. The school was an orphanage set up by the Shoreditch Board of Guardians (and later taken over by the Hackney Poor Law Union) to house pauper children from the East End of London to teach them adult trades and occupations.