There is nothing immediately striking about Great Bardfield. Like many of the rural villages of north Essex, it is a pleasant but unprepossessing place. The village was supposedly given to Anne of Cleves by Henry VIII as part of their divorce settlement and it is home to a rare plant sometimes known as the Bardfield Oxlip. But otherwise it is neither as cliché pretty as nearby Finchingfield nor has the grandeur associated with the medieval wool wealth of Saffron Walden.
In the summer of 1931, however, Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden – who had scoped the area on their bicycles the previous year – rented half of Brick House in the heart of the village. Bawden’s parents, who lived not far away in Braintree, subsequently paid £500 to buy the house the following year. The arrival of these two artists proved a catalyst for their friends to move to the area and together this loose school of painter-designers became known as the Great Bardfield Artists.
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