Gestingthorpe is a quintessential English village. Like much of the rural north of Essex, Gestingthorpe is surrounded by fields and farmland and a history that goes back to Roman occupation. These defining features are clearly represented on the village signs. It is the image at the top corner of these signs, however—of a hunched figure battling through an Antarctic blizzard—that really stands out. In the final decades of the 19th century, the Oates, one of England’s oldest families, moved into Gestingthorpe’s Over Hall. Lawrence Oates, raised amid great wealth and…
