The Rodings are a group of eight villages in the upper part of the River Roding and the west of Essex, England, the largest group in the country to bear a common name.[ (Registration required.)] The Rodings do not lie within a single district in the county; they are arranged around the tripoint of the administrative areas of Chelmsford, Uttlesford and Epping Forest. An alternative arcane name, linked to the Middle English Essex dialect, was The Roothings.
History
The Rodings, the remnants of a single
Anglo-Saxons community known as the
Hroðingas, were led by
Hroða; who sailed up the
River Thames and along a tributary, to settle in the area in the sixth century.
This was one of the tribal areas that were absorbed into the Kingdom of Essex.
[Andrew Reynolds, Later Anglo-Saxon England (Tempus, 2002, page 67) drawing on S Bassett (ed) The Origin of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms (Leicester, 1989)] The
River Roding and the villages derived their name from
Hroða.
The villages are recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Rodinges in the Hundred of Dunmow.
In the second half of the 19th century The Rodings came part of the Great Dunmow and Ongar Unions – poor relief provision set up under the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834. The parishes were in the Rural Dean of Roding and Ongar, the Archdeaconry of Essex, and the Diocese of St Albans. In 1914 the parishes came under the Diocese of Chelmsford. Roman remains have occasionally been found in the area. Crops grown at the time were chiefly wheat, barley and beans, on a heavy soil with a clay subsoil.[ Kelly's Directory of Essex 1882 p.245; 1894 p.285; 1902 p.339; 1914 p.477]
Governance
An electoral ward in the same name exists. The population of this ward at the 2011 Census was 1,853.
Landmarks
The area is typified by medieval thatched cottages, timber-framed manor houses and farmhouses. There is a mid-18th-century
post mill windmill in
Aythorpe Roding, the only surviving windmill in the area. There are a number of churches dating from the Norman period; the oldest is St Margaret of Antioch in
Margaret Roding, which has a Norman doorway and the tomb of a crusader.
Roding names
Transport links
A single bus service, number 59, serves White Roding, Leaden Roding and Margaret Roding. It is operated by Arriva Shires & Essex, running hourly in each direction to
Harlow via
Hatfield Heath and
Chelmsford via
Roxwell. The route is on the Hertfordshire
Intalink network.
Ecclesiastical organisation
In the Church of England Diocese of Chelmsford, Leaden,
Abbess Roding, White and
Beauchamp Roding have formed the
South Rodings parish since 2004.
High and
Aythorpe Roding are
to
Great Canfield and Margaret Roding to
Good Easter and
High Easter, those 6 parishes are served by one
priest-in-charge.
Berners Roding is now part of the Parish of Willingale, the Parish Church of unknown dedication (but thought to be All Saints) is redundant and is privately owned.
[, Abbess, Beauchamp & Berners Roding Parish Council. Retrieved 30 January 2018]
See also
Further reading
-
Stephen Basset, Stephen (1997), "Continuity and fission in the Anglo-Saxon landscape: the origins of the Rodings (Essex)", in Landscape History, vol 19: pp. 25–42
External links
