Description:Postcard view of Heybridge, Lower Tean.
Ivy Shore, nee Farmer, remembered the Phillips family at Heybridge in about 1920:
"Once a year the Philips family gave all the schools a treat at Heybridge. They sent a big cart with horses for us as it was too far to walk. We could just see over the side of the cart. We danced round the Maypole there and we used to make the Barber's Pole and the Gypsies Tent. The Philips family came out on the lawn where we all lined up to receive an orange and a bun. Sometimes we got a little gift like a pencil box or sewing kit - such excitement. It was a Red Letter Day for us."
(From 'Tean Down Memory Lane' by Jim Foley, 1994.)
Samuel Philips (d.1824) bought Heybridge in about 1813 and greatly extended an existing stone built farmhouse. Samuel was part of the J. & N. Phillips textile business who owned nearby Tean Hall Mills. Samuel's brother John lived at Heath House at Upper Tean. The house was further extended during the later 19th and early 20th centuries and remained in the Phillips family until the death of Humphrey Burgoyne Phillips in 1951. It was then put up for sale. The National Health Service bought it but was unable to convert the building into a maternity hospital, so it was sold to a scrap dealer who stripped the house of its fittings. It was demolished during the 1950s with the exception of the servants' quarters which has been converted into apartments. Nightingale Close now stands on the site of the house and its gardens (Florence Nightingale had been a guest at the house in 1840).