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All Nations Bible College in Taplow
BIBLE COLLEGE HAD AN HISTORIC HOME [This article by Leonard Miall was discovered in an old copy of the magazine Round and About, and, I believe, adds something to our knowledge of our parish. Ed.] I read in Round and About of Mrs McGavin’s inquiry about the All Nations Bible College at Taplow. I think I can help you with the history of the establishment, though I know very little about the college itself. Taplow Hill was the name of a large house behind the brick wall, which ran along the south side of Rectory Road, Taplow. (It is not to be confused with Hill House, on the corner of Rectory Road and Berry Hill, which was once the home of the poet Walter de la Mare.) Tony Packe, a distinguished senior resident and historian of Burnham, tells me that Taplow Hill was bought in 1860 by his grandfather, Charles Pearce-Serocold. It made a comfortable home for his wife and 10 children, as well as for their 12 servants. In 1893 Mr Pearce-Serocold built what was called The Red Cottage at the other end of Rectory Road, diagonally opposite St Nicolas Church, as a home for three of his spinster daughters. Two of them subsequently married, and the third, Miss Marie Serocold, lived there until her death in 1948. Charles Pearce-Serocold died in 1904, and the property was inherited by his son Oswald, who dropped the use of the name Pearce, and lived there until 1940. Faced with the prospect of having a large number of munitions workers from the new Slough Trading Estate billeted in his home, Oswald Serocold decided to put Taplow Hill on the market and to move to Maidenhead. The house was then acquired as a rest and rehabilitation centre for Dutch merchant seamen. They had courageously sailed their ships to England to continue the war on the Allied side. Their exiled monarch, Queen Wilhelmina, was living at Stubbings, Maidenhead Thicket, and the headquarters of the Dutch High Command was temporarily at Maryfield, on the north side of Taplow. When the Dutch merchant seamen returned to the Netherlands in 1945, Taplow Hill became the All Nations Bible College, with Mr Brash Bonsall as its head. After the death of Marie Serocold, The Red Cottage was used as a hostel for some of the students at the All Nations Bible College. By August 1953, however, the college had become rather short of students, and they decided to let The Red Cottage. At that time I was returning to England after having been for several years the BBC’s news correspondent in Washington, but I did not yet know what my next job was going to be. My late wife’s parents, who lived at Bourne End, rented The Red Cottage in August 1953 as nearby temporary accommodation for us. The secretary of the All Nations Bible College, Miss Desborough, was then residing in a caravan in the garden of The Red Cottage. It had typical institutional furniture, and each room was labelled with a biblical name such as Tarsus or Nineveh. The bathrooms were Mediterranean I and Mediterranean II. The Bible College was still functioning after Mr Brash Bonsall ceased to be head of it in 1952. In 1953-4 my two elder sons enjoyed attending 'Sunshine Corner', an evening bible class for children conducted by the theological students before they went abroad as missionaries. It had a song which is still remembered: Sunshine Corner, oh it's jolly fine. It’s for children under ninety-nine! In May 1954 we bought Maryfield (the former headquarters of the Dutch High Command, which had subsequently been used as a nurses’ home for the Canadian Red Cross Hospital at Cliveden), and moved out of The Red Cottage. It was then sold as a private home and re-named, first The Red House, and later St Nicolas House. Taplow Hill, the home of the All Nations Bible College, was then pulled down, and replaced by a Span housing estate called Cedar Chase (not Cedar Close), named after some very fine large cedar tress in the grounds. Leonard Miall Here is a picture of the old house on the Cedar Chase site: