Coggeshall

Coggeshall is a market town and parish in the hundred of Lexden. about 47 miles north east of London by the road through Braintree, and 44 miles through Witham. it is 18 from Chelmsford. It stands partly upon the low ground on the north side of the river Blackwater, and partly upon the side of an agreeable hill, which rises on the same side. It is indebted for its existence, according to Morant, to an abbey formed there. other antiquaries ascribe its origin to the romans and contend that this place is the canonium of antonius. Several coins and other roman antiquities have been found in the neighbourhood, sufficient to prove that it had been a roman villa. The manor was, in the reign of Edward the Confessor, the property of Cole, a saxon - and it subsequently passed to King Stephen who, with Queen Maud, founded an Abbey here for cistercian monks in the year 1140. The town was formerly noted for it's woollen and cloth trade and particularly for a superior kind of baize - distinguished by the name 'Coggeshall White'.
The parish of great Coggeshall contains, by the census of 1831, 3277 inhabitants, having increased it's population 758 since the year 1801. [ Abridged from Pigot and Co 1832 ]

“COGGESHALL (GREAT), a market-town and parish in the Witham division of the hundred of LEXDEN, county of ESSEX, 16 miles (N. E.) from Chelmsford, and 45 (N. E.) from London, containing 2896 inhabitants. ................ The living is a vicarage, in the archdeaconry of Colchester, and diocese of London, rated in the king's books at £11.3.4., and in the patronage of Peter Du Cane, Esq. The church, dedicated to St. Peter, ......There are places of worship for Baptists, the Society of Friends, Independents, and Wesleyan Methodists.........[More]” [From Samuel Lewis A Topographical Dictionary of England (1831) - copyright Mel Lockie 2016]

Little Coggeshall - is a place within this parish