Early history Dial House, a large rambling farm cottage, was built in the 16th century.
Oliver Rackham describes Ongar Great Park as possibly having been the "prototype
deer park", mentioned in an "
Anglo-Saxon will of 1045". During the
Victorian era, Dial House was the home of the writer Primrose McConnell, a tenant farmer and the author of
The Agricultural Notebook (1883), which is recognised as a standard reference work for the European farming industry. By 1967 Dial House stood derelict, its acre of garden a bramble-smothered wilderness. Dial House is
Grade II listed on the
National Heritage List for England.
Crass In 1967,
Penny Rimbaud (later the drummer of Crass) began using Dial House as an open space, removing doors and inviting friends to stay in the cottage. Rimbaud moved into the house with
Gee Vaucher and established an "open house" policy. Dial House became the site of organizing for the anarchist movement, including the
Stonehenge Free Festival. ==References==