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Village and civil parish in Essex, England

Great Baddow is an urban village and civil parish in the Chelmsford borough of Essex, England. It is close to the city of Chelmsford and, with a population of over 13,000, is one of the largest villages in the country.

Great Baddow's name is believed to have been derived from the River Beadwan, now known as the River Chelmer, which marks the northern boundary of the village. Beadwan is thought to be a Celtic word of uncertain meaning, possibly birch stream or a reference to the goddess Badbh. > and in the 13th century by Robert de Brus, 5th Lord of Annandale whose widow launched a legal challenge over its ownership on his death in March 1295. After passing to the Crown, Henry VIII later granted it to Catherine of Aragon. Great Baddow is recorded as having had a population of 1,445 in 1801, a figure that had risen to 2,022 in 1841. The Great Baddow Mast – a former Chain Home radar transmitter tower, originally sited at RAF Canewdon – was moved to the outskirts of Great Baddow at around 1954 and is used by BAE Systems for equipment testing. The last remaining example of a Chain Home tower maintaining its platforms, it was made a listed building by Historic England in October 2019 and given a Grade II status.

During the early part of the 20th century, Great Baddow grew through ribbon development towards Chelmsford and Galleywood. In 1936, Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company opened the Marconi Research Laboratory in Great Baddow (now BAE Systems Applied Intelligence Laboratories), bringing together their various radio, television and telephony research teams in a single location. As the electronics industry developed, the campus expanded during the 1940s and 1950s to include research into radar, general physics, high voltage, vacuum physics and semiconductors. The village has continued to expand over subsequent years. The Vineyards, in the centre of the old village, was once a Georgian house set in wooded grounds which later became a hotel. It was demolished in the mid 1960s before the advent of conservation legislation, and subsequently once voted as one of England's ugliest buildings, was demolished in the Spring of 2016, and was replaced with a 53 flat development, made up of one to two bedrooms in two buildings, named Heron Gate; the development was completed in spring
2018. A corner of the grounds of the former Vineyards mansion were retained and form a green area to the west of the Vineyards development. In 1967, a fire station was opened in Great Baddow to replace the former station which occupied a converted hut in Brewery Fields, Galleywood; it was once part of the Galleywood race course complex. Great Baddow has three pubs: the White Horse, Blue Lion and The Star; The Beehive and King's Head pubs have closed in recent times. There is also a family run brewery, the Chelmsford Brewing Company. The former Baddow Brewery, previously owned by the Baddow Brewery Co Ltd, built in 1868 and extended in 1878 by George Scamell, is now a Grade II building and houses local businesses. Great Baddow is also home to the Pontlands Park Country Hotel and the Baddow Antique Centre. The centre of Great Baddow is now a conservation area and contains over 30 listed buildings.

Great Baddow lies to the south east to central Chelmsford, on higher ground that is thought to mark the edge of the main ice mass during the Anglian glaciation. An outcrop of glacial sand and gravel 3 km long and 0.8 km wide is beneath the village, which used to be extracted from several pits in the area, including Beehive Pit (now beneath Harbeard Tye), Baddow Hall Pit (now beneath Baden Powell Close), to the south of the A1114 Princes Road (now in the grounds of Moulsham High School) and on what is now an area of open land off Waterson Vale. Smaller pits were also located off the Galleywood Road (near what is now Hollywood Close) and off Pitt Chase. The area is overlain with head, while the lower levels of the sand and gravel are mixed with London Clay. A Sarsen stone from the Beehive Pit used to stand outside The Beehive pub.

The village secondary school is Great Baddow High School, a sports and science college on Duffield Road. Primary schools include Baddow Hall Infant and Junior Schools at the border of Great Baddow, Beehive Lane County Primary School, Larkrise Primary School, (formerly Rothmans Primary School), and Meadgate County Primary Schools.