Do not know the significance of Merks Hill, just outside Dunmow, past Church End, to the unknown sender.
A description of Stokesay Court.
Equipped with a large boiler and under-floor heating, the house was one of the first private homes in England to have integral electric light, powered by large lead batteries. The grounds contain a fountain, grotto, woodland and a series of pools connected by cascades, rills and steps. Wildlife abounds. Heron, kingfishers, dippers, newts, and even otters have been spotted in and around the pools.
During the First World War Stokesay Court was used as an Auxiliary Military Hospital for convalescent solders and in World War II it served as a boarding house for evacuated Sussex-based Lancing College and then as a Western Command Junior Leaders' School. Throughout all of this, the family continued to live there and the house has survived largely untouched to this day.
Still very much a lived-in, private home, Stokesay Court found fame in 2007 as a major location for the film adaptation of Ian McEwan's book Atonement.
The then, 1906, owner was Herbert Derby Allcroft , a barrister, who had married in 1900 and had children Herbert Allcroft 1904/5-1905, John Russell Allcroft 1905 & Jewell Allcroft 1907. In 1911C there were many servants and 2 childrens' maids there. Herbert Allcroft died in Jun1911 Ludlow aged 45, & although his wife remarried, she had no more children, so not the family that Topp was working for in Biarritz.