Eric William Ravilious was a British painter, designer, book illustrator and wood-engraver. He grew up in Sussex, and is particularly known for his watercolours of the South Downs, Castle Hedingham and other English landscapes, which examine English landscape and vernacular art with an off-kilter, modernist sensibility and clarity. He served as a war artist, and was the first British war artist to die on active service in World War II when the aircraft he was in was lost off Iceland.

Great Bardfield is a large village in the Braintree district of Essex, England. It is located approximately 9 mi (14 km) northwest of the town of Braintree, and approximately 12 mi (19 km) southeast of Saffron Walden.