Lives in Cricket No 13 - AP Lucas

neighbouring town of Ingatestone, leaving the Rectory vacant and Bunny and Bessie moved in. 103 Two of their three servants – cook/housekeeper Ellen Heard and maid Millicent Fairchild – went with them and stayed until 1911 at least, so evidently there was loyalty on both sides. 104 The rectory belonged not to the Kortrights, but to the lords of the manor, the Warden and Fellows of Wadham College Oxford, so Charles and his family cannot have given Lucas his home in Fryerning, though they may have pulled a few strings. Lucas was almost immediately elected a churchwarden. The rectory was set in five acres in an idyllic spot backing on to the churchyard, so he would not have had to go too far to carry out his duties. Already old in 1610, the house ‘had been much altered and added to at various times [and] much improved of late years by painting the window-frames a dark colour, and encouraging the growth of creepers.’ 105 It has since been replaced by a new building. 106 The Lucases moved in 1916 to Brora, a house in Ingatestone on the corner of Roman Road and Avenue Road. Although it had only a small garden, its rateable value was slightly higher than that of the Fryerning rectory, 107 perhaps because it was only a short walk from the railway station and access to the City. It was also more modern and so altogether more convenient for the couple, who were now in their late fifties. Around the end of 1922 they moved again, to The Cottage in the hamlet of Howe Street at Great Waltham, some four miles north of Chelmsford. 108 This move is more puzzling, because it took Lucas further away from his beloved Fryerning and there was no station in the village. It was apparently a more modest home, and he may have had to take it on as a result of losses 124 Bunny, Korty and Fryerning, 1885-1923 Lucas’s grave 103 Essex annual reports give his address as Chelmsford in 1902 and Fryerning in 1903. 104 Censuses of 1901, 1911. 105 Wilde, E.E., Ingatestone and the Essex Great Road with Fryerning , Oxford University Press, 1913, pp 282-283. 106 Information from Robin Hobbs. 107 Inland Revenue finance book, 1910, Nos. 356 and 369, ERO A/R 2/3/20. 108 The Lucases are listed at Brora on the electoral register dated 14 October 1922, but not in Ingatestone or in Great Waltham after that. The Cottage is hardly a very distinctive name, and I have not been able to establish exactly where it was.