Coggeshall
Coggeshall is a village and civil parish in the Braintree district of Essex, England. It lies between Braintree and Colchester on the Roman road of Stane Street and the River Blackwater. At the 2021 census the parish had a population of 4,660 and the built up area had a population of 3,810.
It has almost 300 listed buildings and a market whose charter was granted in 1256 by King Henry III.
Toponymy
The meaning the name of Coggeshall is uncertain. The -hall indicates a nook of land or a small valley, but there are conflicting theories as to the meaning of the first part of the name. Different pronunciations and spellings have been used throughout its history. The name appears as Kockeshale around the year 1060. while the first element may be an Old English personal name. Margaret Gelling associated the name Coggeshall with the landscape in which it is situated, believing that -hall comes from Anglo-Saxon healh, meaning a nook or hollow, thus rendering the name as "Cogg's nook", corresponding to Coggeshall's sunken position in the 150-foot contour line.The Domesday Book from 1086 addresses the village as Cogheshala and it is mentioned elsewhere as Cogshall, Coxal, Coggashæl'' and Gogshall. Coggeshall has also been called Sunnydon, referenced in 1224 as an alias for the village.
Beaumont brought together several theories for the name in his 1890 book A History of Coggeshall, in Essex.
- Weever 1631 wrote about a monument found on "Coccillway", thought that Coccill was a Lord of the area in Roman days and a corruption of the name led to Coggeshall.
- the largely discredited antiquarian Alfred John Dunkin thought that it was a concatenation of two Celtic words – Cor or Cau with Gafæl, enclosure hold; or Cœd and Cær or Gær, camp in a wood, "Cogger", the person owning this camp may have had a hall, therefore Coggershall.
- Philip Morant opined that the name was a corruption of Cocks-hall, with the seal of the Abbey featuring three cockerels. This may also be supported by Beaumont's suggestion that the first parish church, like the current one, was dedicated to Saint Peter, and the cockerel was used as a sign of this dedication.
- Beaumont also reasons that the name may have come from the red-coloured shrub the Coccus, whose colour is pronounced Coch; many Ancient Britons had names related to colours.
History
The vill of Coggeshall is mentioned as Cogheshala in the Domesday Book of 1086 within the Witham hundred of Essex. The vill was subdivided into three manors, each in different ownership, the most valuable of which was owned by Eustace, Count of Boulogne, who had acquired that manor since the Norman Conquest. At that time, Coggeshall had "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".
A priest was mentioned in the Domesday Book, suggesting Coggeshall was already a parish. The parish church, dedicated to St Peter ad Vincula, was rebuilt in the 15th century.
Around 1140, King Stephen and his queen Matilda, founded Coggeshall Abbey on the south bank of the River Blackwater. It was a large Savigniac abbey with 12 monks from Savigny 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. Long Bridge, in the south of the village, was probably built in the 13th century using these bricks and the kiln in Tilkey continued to produce bricks until 1845. The Church was sufficiently complete 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 village'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. In 1250 the Abbot of Coggeshall was allowed by Royal Charter to hold an eight-day fair commencing on 31 July – the feast of St. Peter-ad-Vincula, to whom the Parish Church was dedicated. In 1256, a Saturday market was granted as long as it didn't interfere with its neighbours. Colchester complained in 1318 that Coggeshall was a hindrance, and their complaint, being upheld, resulted in the market being moved to Thursday, where it remains to this day.
The Black Death hit the abbey hard, with the number of monks and conversi much reduced. Revenues across Essex fell to between one third to one half of pre-plague rates; the abbey suffered financially with tenanted and cultivated lands heavily decreased. During the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 the Abbey was broken into and pillaged. The sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire, John Sewall, was targeted by rioters at his Coggeshall house, now the Chapel Inn. 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 Dissolution of the Monasteries brought an end to the prosperity of monks. In 1530 Abbot Love was demoted with a list of complaints raised against him; though some of them may have been fabricated, it appears that standards at the monastery were dropping. It was common practice at the time that abbots unsympathetic to the will of the king were replaced with more favourable ones; in this case Abbot More was supplanted by Dr. T. Leigh. Coggeshall survived the Act of Suppression in 1536 and the Abbot of St. Mary Grace's, London, invested in its future. However, the political situation was opposed to the monasteries and Coggeshall succumbed in 1538, handed over by Abbot More. The monks were sent back to their families or into the community, many becoming priests. Abbot Love became vicar of Witham where he stayed until his death in 1559. The monastery's possessions and lands, totalling nearly 50,000 acres, were seized; King Henry VIII granted them to Sir Thomas Seymour. They remained in his possession until 1541 when they were split up.
In 1086 the Domesday Book had recorded Coggeshall in the hundred of Witham. Following the founding of the abbey, the parish came to be administered in two parts: Little Coggeshall, covering the part of the parish south of the River Blackwater, which included the abbey and Coggeshall Hamlet; and Great Coggeshall, covering the part of the parish north of the river, which included the main part of the village and the parish church. Great Coggeshall became part of the Lexden hundred, whilst Little Coggeshall remained in Witham hundred. Coggeshall remained a single parish for ecclesiastical purposes, but Great Coggeshall and Little Coggeshall served as separate civil parishes for the purposes of administering the poor laws.
The civil parishes of Great and Little Coggeshall were reunited in 1949, when they and the neighbouring parish of Markshall to the north were merged into a new civil parish of Coggeshall, subject to some adjustments to the boundaries with neighbouring parishes.
Economy and industry
After the decline of the wool trade, Coggeshall's economy centred around cloth, silk and velvet, with over half of the population employed in its production. The cloth trade is first linked with the town in 1557 as a well-established industry but the onslaught of various trade laws brought about the decline of the trade. The last book order entry for cloth production is listed as 14 November 1800.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.
Coggeshall was noted for the quality of its brewing, in the late 19th century having four well-established institutions. In 1888 Gardner and Son were awarded the Diploma of Honour at the National Brewer's Exhibition. The brewery buildings have undergone alternative use in recent years, with several now used a residential buildings and another used as the Coggeshall Village Hall. In 2008 the Red Fox Brewery was opened near Coggeshall.
By the end of the 19th century gelatine and isinglass production was well established at a site on West Street, production continued until ceasing in the late 1980s.
In the mid-19th century John Kemp King established seed growing in the area where it continues to this day. The seed growing industry is said to have originally started with the Cistercian monks at the abbey.