The manor of Wormley was granted by Harold, later King of England, to the college of Canons he had founded at Waltham in 1060. This grant was confirmed by Edward the Confessor. From the Domesday Survey we learn that Wormley was taxed as five hides (about 700 acres) and that there were live villeins, four bordars, three cottagers, and two bondmen. There was pannage (feed) for three hundred hogs and the value of the manor was four pounds. In 1177 King Henry II converted this college into a priory of the Augustinian order and in 1184 it was raised to the dignity of an abbey. The manor, though for a time rented by Sir John Say of Broxbourne, remained in the abbey’s hands until the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII, when Waltham was the final one to be surrendered in March, 1540. Its value at that time was about £ 900, possibly something like £15,000 or more in our money. The abbot was one of the twenty-eight who were entitled to rank as mitred abbots and as such had a seat in Parliament. The last abbot of Waltham was a Robert Fuller, who had also been prior of St. Bartholomew’s, Smithfield, London.

Edward, first Lord North

In 1540 it was granted to an Edward North, Treasurer of the Court of Augmentations, at which time he was knighted, to be created later, in 1554, first Baron North. In the seventeenth century the manor was held by several members of the Tooke family, of whom three were in turn Auditors of the Court of Wards and Liveries. In 1739 it was sold to Abraham Hume and remained with that family till 1838. In 1880 it was acquired by Mr. H. J. Bushby, a well-known Metropolitan police magistrate who was also Recorder of Colchester. After being held by his son who, it is interesting to note, was a direct descendant of the Edward North mentioned above, and his grandson, it was sold in 1931 to Major Albert. Pam, O.B.E.