A luxury tudor hotel situated in the Essex countryside

In 1967 the Moat house, as it was known back then, began its journey to become the Marygreen Manor as we know and love it today. It was during this year that a man named John Bairstow founded the Moat House Hotel Company along with a subsidiary company known as the Moat House Restaurants. Work on creating the “small, luxuriously appointed hotel” began towards the end of 1967. The building work carried out by Brentwood building company A.D Seager Ltd saw the largest amount of construction works and the largest building timber consignment in the area for some years.

The extensions built were essential for the transformation into the Moat House Hotel as the new building comprised the restaurant and the kitchen. This new addition was added to the west end of the old house with the help of a newly constructed reception, lounge and bar area in between. The new building was essentially a conversion of the original coach house and stables and although the standards of construction work and materials were of the day, they didn’t miss a beat when it came to utilising the Abridge barn timbers in a decorative fashion that was in keeping with the style of the old house. Its history most certainly wasn’t forgotten.

Soon after construction work came to a head, it was decided that an emblem would be needed. A man named Ken Kimberly stepped up to the challenge and designed one based on the Tudor rose. It was set amid a scroll that bore the date 1512. Legend would have it that 1512 was the year that the house was appointed a hunting lodge by Henry VIII while under the ownership of Henry Roper.

The Moat House emblem was later erected in plaster on an inside wall of the hotel close to the restaurant’s entrance. This was embellished further with ribboned vine patterns giving it real emphasis.

This was just one of the beginning stages in the transformation to the Marygreen Manor Hotel and Restaurant. If you’d like to find out more you could always delve into the book, “The Place At Brook Street” or better yet, pay the Marygreen Manor a visit and see the history unfold before your eyes in all its original glory.