We urgently need help with stewarding for some of our larger events, such as Open Days. If any Friend would be willing to act as a steward, please get in touch with Denys Favre on 01992 571657.

Photo: Iris Newbury

Meet a Volunteer

Arnold Verrall has been involved with the Copped Hall project since its early days, though for long – he was an ‘troglodyte’ working below ground shifting rubble for weeks on end! For more than a year he spent every Sunday clearing the tunnel that runs round the mansion inside the walls at basement level. He has also been a member of the Friends’ committee for several years.

It was either from my father or from Paul Flack, a local stonemason and friend who sadly died last year, that I heard about the Trust having acquired Copped Hall. Paul and I promptly joined the Friends and I distinctly remember being at what I think was their inaugural AGM in the recently renovated Racquets Court. I was particularly impressed by Charles Rush [the first chairman of the Friends] but never got to know him as he died quite soon afterwards. I was living in a bachelor pad in Leyton at the time and, although I visited my parents in Epping most Sundays, my somewhat dissolute weekend lifestyle meant I was rarely in condition to get to Copped Hall in time to do any work! Eventually, in September 1999, Paul persuaded me to make the effort, and I’ve been coming ever since. I knew about Copped Hall before then, however; as a family we enjoyed country walks and one of my first memories of Copped Hall is of the pigs that were raised here in the 1960s. I have another connection, too: in May 1917 my grandfather cycled with buckets of water hanging from his handlebars in an effort to assist the skeleton-staffed brigade who were attempting to extinguish the fire in the mansion.

Exempt from serving in the first world war (he had a club foot), he was the booking clerk at Epping station and lived nearby. In retrospect it would have been better if he had taken a camera – he was a keen amateur photographer who sometimes sold his photos to the press.

From my first day, when I was given the option to dig, I have never really wanted to do anything else. I enjoyed losing myself in physical labour after working in an office all week and combining hard work with something constructive such as emptying Copped Hall of the muck and rubble it had accumulated over the years was very satisfying. I like the physical exertion and the sense of achieving something permanent. It was my delight at seeing bricks being put back in place that led me to go to evening classes in bricklaying at Loughton College, after which Alan (Cox) let me have a go at repairing the wall in what was the billiards room in 2004. I wasn’t the first to start clearing the passageway round the mansion – that was Pauline Dalton – but I spent every Sunday for more than a year shovelling earth and rubble into buckets, moving them via wheelbarrows up the ramp and dumping them out of the building. Rubble from the demolished model farm had been poured into the passageway through the outside pavement openings in order, I gather, to stop trespassers gaining entry.

It was a strange project because it opened up drains that had been blocked for decades, thereby enabling the house to dry out properly. At the time the mansion was still mostly open to the elements and we found ourselves working ankle-deep in water whenever it rained! The digging wasn’t quite as pleasurable as work I’d previously undertaken as it was fairly dark and no artefacts came to light, unless you treasure dead birds and a 1950s’ washing machine drum.

At the moment I am involved in two areas: during the week Chris Manners and I are digging out dumped earth from the end of the causeway and retrieving broken slabs of stone for future restoration. On Sundays I am in the mansion helping to remove soil from below the floor in Lady Henrietta’s dressing room. It then has to be sifted to retrieve any tiny pieces of ceiling plaster.

Finding artefacts has been one of the delights of working at Copped Hall. Brenda Bowtle and I discovered some wonderful tiles with images of saints from various’s museum) and I have my own collection of vintage beer cans – useful for my proposed history of the beverage choices of 20th century vandalising trespassers! I regularly enjoy the Apple Day celebrations and the vegetables produced in the Walled Garden, especially the Jerusalem artichokes. Less enjoyable was the incident when Chris and I finally pulled up a large sycamore root at the end of the causeway last summer. I was proudly holding it aloft when I realised we had’ nest and the wasps had found their way inside my trousers and were now stinging my legs!

Other highlights over the years include being on television when a documentary was made about Copped Hall volunteers, running alongside snooker player Ronnie O’Sullivan on a Fun Run and being part of the choir last year. I am proud of organising a scheme to reduce the rubble that was accumulating in the car park and initiating the publication of a second edition of the book about the Copped Hall fire. Last year for my mother’s 90th birthday celebration we used the Rolls- Royce to take us from our house into Epping and that, too, was a fantastic experience. (My grandmother was in the Mothers’ Union with Mrs Wythes.) I also remember the moving ceremony that was held in the hall after the sad death of Adelaide Karaskas and I’m glad that we staged an exhibition of Paul's works in the Racquets Court before he died.