Coggeshall

Coggeshall is a small market town of 3,919 residents (in 2001) in Essex, England. Situated between Colchester and Braintree on the Roman road of Stane Street and intersected by the River Blackwater, it is known for its almost 300 listed buildings and formerly extensive antique trade. Many local businesses, such as the White Hart Hotel and the Chapel Inn have been established for hundreds of years. The town was featured in the BBC series Lovejoy. A thriving market has been run every week on Market Hill since 1256, when a charter to do so was granted by Henry III.

Coggeshall won the Essex Best Kept Village award in its category in 1998 and 2001-03; it was named the Eastern England & Home Counties Village of the Year in 2003. [2]

1 History
2 Landmarks
3 Ralph of Coggeshall
4 Coggeshall jobs
5 Coggeshall Gang
6 Local tales
7 References
8 External links

[edit] History

Coggeshall dates back at least to an early Saxon settlement. There is evidence of a Roman villa or settlement before then and the town lies on Stane Street, which may have been built on a much earlier track. Coggeshall is situated at a ford of the River Blackwater, part of another path running from the Blackwater Valley to the Colne Valley. Where these paths crossed a settlement started. The area around Coggeshall has been settled since the Mesolithic period.

The town's sign depicts a Cistercian farming sheep at the abbey. On the other side is a weaver by his loom.

Coggeshall is mentioned in the Domesday Book as Cogheshal. The Manor of Coggeshall was owned by a Saxon freeman named Cogga, and at the time of its entry there was "a mill; about 60 men with ploughs and horses, oxen and sheep; woodland with swine and a swineherd, four stocks of bees and one priest". William the Conqueror gave the Manor to Eustace, the Count of Boulogne.

The modern history of Coggeshall begins around 1140 when King Stephen and his queen Matilda, founded a large Savigniac abbey with 12 monks from Savigy in France, the last to be established before the order was absorbed by the Cistercians in 1147. Matilda visited the Abbey for the last time in 1151 and asked for the Abbot's blessing, "If thou should never see my face again, pray for my Soul. More things are wrought by prayer than this World dreams of."

Flint and rubble were the main materials used in the construction of the monastery, and the buildings were faced with stone punted up the Blackwater and locally produced brick. Brick making had died out in Britain since the Romans left and the monks may have been instrumental in its re-establishment around this time. They built a kiln in the North of the town at a place called Tile Kiln, an area now known as Tilkey. The bricks from Coggeshall are some of the earliest known bricks in post Roman Britain. The Church was completed to a sufficient extent to be dedicated by the Bishop of London in 1167.

The estate commanded by the monastery was extensive. The monks farmed sheep, and their skilled husbandry developed a high quality wool that formed the foundation of the town's prosperous cloth trade during the 15th to mid-18th centuries, when it was particularly renowned for its fine Coggeshall White cloth. The monastery also had fishponds with strict fishing rights - a Vicar of Coggeshall was imprisoned in Colchester for stealing fish. However the monastery could not produce all that it required and sold produce at an annual fair to buy the things they did not have. The fair was granted a charter in 1256 by King Henry III and occurred on August 1st - the feast of St. Peter-ad-Vincula, to whom the Parish Church was dedicated.

During the Peasant's Revolt of 1381 the Abbey was broken into and pillaged. By the early 15th Century a new church was begun at the Abbey called St. Mary's, it was completed by the start of the 16th Century but the Reformation brought an end to the prosperity of Monks and in February 1538 the monastery's possessions and lands, totalling nearly 50,000 acres (200 km²), were seized; King Henry VIII granted them to Sir Thomas Seymour.

After the decline of the wool trade, Coggeshall's economy centred around silk and velvet, with over half of the population employed in its production. The 1851 census showed Coggeshall to be one of the most industrialised places in Essex. However the English silk industry was being artificially supported by a ban on imported silk goods; Continental silk was cheaper and of a higher quality. When Parliament repealed the ban in 1826 and later reduced and finally removed duties on French silk, English weavers were unable to compete and Coggeshall's economy was devastated.

The town again found fame in Tambour lace, a form of lace-making introduced to Coggeshall around 1812 by a Monsieur Drago and his daughters. The production of this lace continued through the 19th century before dying out after the Second World War. Examples of Coggeshall lace have been worn by Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth II.

Other important businesses in later years were the production of gelatine and isinglass, brewing and seed growing.

[edit] Landmarks

St. Nicholas' Chapel, Coggeshall Abbey's gatehouse chapel, survived the Dissolution of the Monasteries intact, albeit converted into a barn. Subsequently restored, it is the oldest surviving post-Roman brick building in the country (c. 1220). The original bricks from the ruins of the abbey are older still, and were made by the monks themselves. These were previously believed to be the oldest post-Roman bricks in the country, however newer evidence suggests that brick making was not reintroduced to Britain by the Cistercians, but that there was already a brick making industry around Coggeshall in the early 12th century, prompted by the exhaustion of the supply of recyclable Roman bricks.

The Church of St. Peter-ad-Vincula (St. Peter in chains) is one of the largest churches in Essex (internal dimensions of 134 ft 6 in by 62 ft 9 in, the tower reaches a height of 72 ft). Built in the perpendicular style with 'wool money' during the early 15th century, its unusual size is testament to the affluence of the town at the time.

Paycocke's is a house built in or around 1500 by John Paycocke as a wedding present for his son Thomas. The Paycocke family exemplified a trend for successful butchers to acquire large flocks of their own sheep which would produce wool as well as meat. The wool could be used to make cloth and often the 'grazing butchers' would eventually evolve into clothiers. These merchants frequently became very wealthy during this process.

Grange Barn was built by the Cistercians in the 13th century to serve the abbey, it is one of the oldest surviving timber-framed buildings in Europe, although it has undergone extensive reconstruction and its original thatch roof has been replaced with tile.

Paycocke's and Grange Barn are properties of The National Trust.

Further information: The National Trust - Paycocke's, The National Trust - Coggeshall Grange Barn and Coggeshall Grange Barn.

[edit] Ralph of Coggeshall

Main article: Ralph of Coggeshall

The sixth abbot of Coggeshall's abbey (from 1207-1218), Lord Ralph was one of the most important chroniclers of his time, described by the historian E. L. Cutts as "a man of polished erudition, as well as of temperance and arrived at such a degree of excellence in literature as to be esteemed by far the first of the brethren of his convent." He is known particularly for his work in the Chronicon Anglicanum (Chronicle of English Affairs). It is from that work that much of the early history of Coggeshall is known. Due to ill health he ceded his title to the seventh abbot, Lord Benedict de Straford in 1218, living quietly in the Abbey until his death in 1228.

[edit] Coggeshall jobs

See also: Wise Men of Gotham

The saying "A Coggeshall job" was used in Essex from the 17th to the 19th century to mean any poor or pointless piece of work, after the reputed stupidity of its villagers. There were numerous stories of the inhabitants' ridiculous endeavours, such as chaining up a wheelbarrow in a shed after it had been bitten by a rabid dog, for fear it would go mad. John Ray's 1670 Collection of English Proverbs gives the following rhyme:

Braintree for the pure,

Bocking for the poor;

Cogshall for the jeering town,

And Kelvedon for the whore.

Other jobs included winching up a cow onto the church roof to eat the grass growing there, knocking down one of two windmills as there would not be enough wind for both of them, attempting to divert the course of the river with hurdles, hanging sheets over roads to prevent the wind from blowing disease into the town and some appropriated from other 'fool centres', for example the classic "fishing for the moon".

[edit] Coggeshall Gang

In the 1840s a gang of criminals terrorised Coggeshall, their headquarters were on Stoneham Street and their success due to the unpaid and untrained, spare-time Parish constables' inability to deal effectively with crime in their local area. The gang committed burglaries and violent robberies across Coggeshall, Great Tey, Cressing and Bradwell. Their crimes were often brutal and mainly directed at the elderly. Dell's hole in nearby Earls Colne is named after Mr. Dell who was attacked by the gang. Such was the interest in the gang that when finally caught and brought to trial, the galleries of the courtroom were filled with fashionably dressed women. One of the members was hanged, with several others being transported.

[edit] Local tales

Thomas Hawkes on Market Hill, he is saying "O Lord receive my Spirit"

Thomas Hawkes burned to death in 1555 during the Marian Persecutions rather than allow his son to be baptised into the Roman Catholic Church. Responding to Edmund Bonner, the Bishop of London, who urged him to return to Catholicism, he is reported to have said: "No my lord, that I will not, for if I had a hundred bodies I would suffer them all to be torn in pieces rather than I will abjure and recant." As he burned, Hawkes threw up his hands and clapped them three times, a sign to his friends that the pain could be endured. Hawkes' death and the circumstances leading up to it are recorded in detail in John Foxe's Book of Martyrs.
Mary Honywood is commemorated in the church for having a total of 365 descendants at the time of her death.
Coggeshall is supposedly located at a crossing of ley lines.
The town clock was built to celebrate Queen Victoria's jubilee in 1887 and the clockhouse was at one point a school for the poor children of the town.
Coggeshall is one of the many sites claimed to be the burial place of Boudica.
One of the latest recorded witch-hunts in England took place in Coggeshall. It is known from the diary of Joseph Bufton, a resident of the town, that in 1699 the widow Comon was tried three times for witchcraft, each time by 'swimming' - binding her limbs and putting her in the river to see if she would sink. She was found guilty on each occasion but died, probably from influenza, before she could be hanged.
During the Napoleonic Wars Coggeshall was required to raise a company of men for the defence of the country. This they did, although the Coggeshall Volunteers famously consisted of 20 officers and only 3 privates. One resident of the town, the schoolmaster Thomas Harris, was so amused by the situation he was inspired to write a short, satirical play entitled "The C*******ll Volunteer Corps". In the play he lampooned the surfeit of officers ("As the Corps at present consists mostly of officers no more will be admitted; but should any neighbouring Corps be in want of a few it may be accommodated at the rate of one officer for one private, and in every dozen so exchanged an officer will be thrown in extra. God save the King"), the quality of the troops and the courage of their commanders (in the event that the nearby town of Colchester was invaded the corps would move to defend Braintree, and if Braintree were to be attacked they would defend Colchester, etc.) The play was so popular it reached four editions. Unfortunately, despite Harris' insistence that it was not so, many of the town's citizens believed that they were being personally caricatured and, taking offence, withdrew their children from his school.

[edit] References

Beaumont, George Frederick (1890). A History of Coggeshall, in Essex. ISBN 0-9539165-0-2.
Rose, Beatrice M. [c.a. 1950s] (2003). A Brief History of Coggeshall Abbey. Coggeshall: Coggeshall Museum.