Essex history on www.gedmartin.net
A list of material on www.gedmartin.net relating to the history of Essex. Essex, of course, is defined as in terms of its historic boundaries, including areas now administratively part of Greater London.
Places and place names
Whatever happened to Chadwell Street? Notes on the history of an Ilford high road settlement. Chadwell Street was a coaching era pit-stop, which declined with the coming of the railway.
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/323-whatever-happened-to-chadwell-street
Maryland: an American place-name in east London? The essay challenges the loose tradition that the settlement was named by a 17th-century merchant who had made his fortune in the colony of Maryland, and dismisses an unsubstantiated connection with a Virginia planter called Richard Lee. Similar place names in Essex and Middlesex suggest that the name is of Anglo-Saxon origin and refers to land close to a parish boundary.
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/320-maryland-an-american-place-name-in-east-london
Pissingford: an embarrassing Essex place-name For 600 years, Passingford Bridge, between Romford and Chipping Ongar, was called Pissingford. The essay reviews examples of the name, suggests a connection with the discharge of river water from an upstream millrace, and finally chronicles its tactful emendation in the age of Jane Austen.
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/300-pissingford-an-embarrassing-essex-place-name-2
Passingford Bridge sketch map The map, which has won no prizes for cartographic elegance, accompanies "Pissingford: an embarrassing Essex place-name" (above).
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/298-passingford-bridge-sketch-map
The Essex parish of South Weald and the Doddinghurst List Most of the parish of South Weald formed part of Chafford Hundred, but a fringe area, curiously termed the 'Doddinghurst List', was in Barstable Hundred, and elected its own parish constable. The origins of this curious anomaly are explored, and its nineteenth-century eclipse is noted.
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/221-the-essex-parish-of-south-weald-and-the-doddinghurst-list
"Housen" – evidence for the survival and decline of an Essex dialect plural Essex people remained loyal to the weak noun plural of "house" for centuries after Shakespeare's plays and Anglican liturgy had settled on the modern strong form of "houses". Examples are documented, and the role of the State school system in its decline suggested.
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/222-housen-evidence-for-the-survival-and-decline-of-an-essex-dialect-plural
Anglican contempt for Essex Quakers: Canewdon, c. 1667 The deaths of four members of the Society of Friends in the marshland parishes of Canewdon and Great Stambridge triggered celebratory doggerel verse in the Canewdon parish register.
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/401-canewdon-quakers
The Terling thesis: an agenda for the reconsideration of the work of Wrightson and Levine (review essay) Poverty and Piety in an English Village: Terling 1525-1700, by Keith Wrightson and David Levine (1979), was a landmark local study. The essay proposes that the authors' arguments might be reassessed in several ways. Terling was both a village and a parish, a distinction that it is not always clear. The powerful Mildmay family, whose main residence was eight miles away, owned a mansion adjoining the village street, and seem sometimes to have resided there. This gave them motives for exercising measures of social control, for instance over the nearby village inn. It is suggested that the use of local courts to control the behaviour of the poor after c. 1608 may not represent the determination of local Puritan farmers to impose godly order, but reflects rather the death of Sir Thomas Mildmay II and the succession of his heir Sir Thomas Mildmay III. Thomas II operated at the heart of the county power structure, and probably dealt with local problems on his own initiative. Thomas III was alienated from the local elite, and it is possible he influenced parish officers to use more formal legal procedures to control the villagers.
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/345-the-terling-thesis
Terling images: towards a reconsideration of the 'Terling thesis' This illustrated essay explored the Terling neighbourhood as a preparatory step towards "The Terling thesis: an agenda for the reconsideration of the work of Wrightson and Levine".
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/343-terling-images
From Little Ilford to Botany Bay: Frances Davis, cross-dressing First Fleeter Frances Davis was a young female thief who dressed in male attire to disguise her identity. She was transported to New South Wales after committing an audacious robbery in the area now known as Manor Park. She became a successful entrepreneur in the colony, revisited England at least once, but died in Sydney in 1828.
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/332-cross-dressing-first-fleeter
James Smith, eccentric tourist on Australia's First Fleet: a tentative identification Historians of Australia seem to have missed James Smith, who booked a cabin on the convict ship Lady Penrhyn with the intention of taking a cruise to Botany Bay. The Note suggests that he came from the village of Messing.
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/330-james-smith-eccentric-tourist-on-australia-s-first-fleet
Bush: the London area origins of an Australian term This extended essay reviews the origins of an important term in Australian English, rejecting the often-asserted but entirely unfounded theory that it came from South Africa. It argues that it is likely that convicts from the London area adapted a word known through local place names. The principal Essex examples were Harlow Bush Common (scene of an annual fair treated by Londoners as a kind of Saturnalia) and Hawkesbury Bush in the parish of Fobbing, a clump of trees on a low ridge used as a navigation mark by Thames mariners.
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/386-bush
The Reverend William Palin (1803-1882), the Essex village of Stifford and the Grays Steamboats In 1840, William Palin, the opinionated rector of the south Essex village of Stifford, travelled from central London to nearby Grays by Thames paddle-steamer. Unbeknown to passengers, two steamers engaged in an unofficial race from London Bridge to Gravesend. Since there was no pier at Grays, steamers stopped briefly in midstream to transfer passengers to a rowing boat. On this occasion, the vessel barely paused. Palin was pitched into the river and almost drowned. The essay reviews his campaign to expose this dangerous practice.
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/278-the-reverend-william-palin-1803-1882-the-essex-village-of-stifford-and-the-grays-steamboats
Edward Charles Hamilton: the person Parnell punched In 1869, the future Irish leader C.S. Parnell got into a fight with a passer-by outside Cambridge station. Edward Charles Hamilton was no saint, as the people of Wivenhoe and Colchester could later attest.
Magdalene College Cambridge Notes: James Bradbury and the Battle of Almanza (1708) James Bradbury was rector of Wicken Bonhunt. He also served as an Army chaplain and was present at a forgotten battle in Spain.
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/244-james-bradbury-and-the-battle-of-almanza
Sootigine: Marketing a Failed Victorian Fertiliser Sootigine was a bogus fertiliser manufactured at Hackney Downs, Middlesex, in the 1880s. There were several Essex connections in this amusing story.
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/270-sootigine
Romford's Garden Suburb: the origins of Gidea Park seeks to explain why almost 30 years passed from the first proposal to develop housing on the Gidea Hall estate before the Garden Suburb project was launched in 1909-11.
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/420-origins-of-gidea-park
The idealised homes of Gidea Park: some images from the 1911 Exhibition supplements "Romford's Garden Suburb: the origins of Gidea Park" (above) and discusses some of the architect-designed houses erected in 1910-11.
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/419-gidea-images
Essex history on www.gedmartin.net
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/411-essex-history-on-www-gedmartin-ne
Havering History Cameos Between 2012 and 2021, I contributed local history articles to the Romford Recorder, the local newspaper in my native suburb. It was an unpaid assignment that enabled me to 'put something back' into the area where I had received my schooling – and it gave me a pleasant outlet for sometimes whimsical and speculative tales. The articles were written to a set length, and appear in martinalia as "cameos". I tried to cover all areas within the Borough of Havering, but no attempt was made to group material in the first four collections by locality.
Havering History Cameos
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/235-havering-history-cameos
More Havering History Cameos
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/239-more-havering-history-cameos
Havering History Cameos: Third Series (2016-2017)
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/289-havering-history-cameos-third-series-2016-2017
Havering History Cameos: Fourth Series
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/334-havering-history-cameos-fourth-series
Rainham, Wennington, South Hornchurch and Elm Park: some glimpses of the past
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/348-rainham-wennington-south-hornchurch-and-elm-park
Havering History Cameos: Exploring Essex
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/335-havering-history-cameos-exploring-essex
During the Covid emergency, I supplied some additional material.
Lockdown in Havering: exploring old maps and photographs online is self-explanatory.
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/321-lockdown-in-havering-exploring-old-maps-and-photographs-online
Street-surfing in Victorian and Edwardian Havering suggested ways of exploring some of the Victorian and Edwardian corners of the Borough of Havering without getting arrested as a potential burglar.
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/327-victorian-and-edwardian-havering
Some material was also supplied for the Newham Recorder
Why we say West HAM, and not West'um explained how the distinction between the Anglo-Saxon words 'hamme' (riverside meadowland) and 'ham' (farmstead) still affect the way we pronounce place names today.
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/326-why-we-say-west-ham-and-not-west-um
A tribute to East Ham may be described as a bit of fun.
https://www.gedmartin.net/martinalia-mainmenu-3/324-a-tribute-to-east-ham