Chadwell St Mary

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Chadwell-St-Mary is a small village in the borough of Thurrock in England.

The small village is almost directly connected with the town of Grays.

The Village is located north of Tilbury

[edit] History

[edit] Origins of the village's name

There are several theories as to how the name of Chadwell originated.

One refers to St. Cedd, one of four brothers, all of who were priests, the others being Chad, Caelin and Cynibill. Cedd, a Christian Missionary to the Mercians, built churches in several places, two of which were at Ithancester (Bradwell on Sea) and Tilbury. The church at Bradwell, St Peter on the Wall, is still standing, but the site of the church at Tilbury is not known. There are a number of places in Essex said to be named after Chad, with whom Cedd is sometimes confused, but there is no evidence that Chad ever visited the County.

In Essex, eight towns/villages have the termination 'Well', which in Anglo-Saxon meant 'spring'. The ancient well at the bottom of Chadwell Hill, known as St Chad's Well, which has now disappeared, had more of the appearance of a tank, wide and shallow, large enough to walk into, was likely to be of Roman origin, as was the road beside it. It is presumably the cold well that gave Chadwell its name, although confusingly another old word (Chaud) means a warm spring. If the village name had retained its ancient Domesday form, Celdewella (cold spring), St Chad would in all likelihood be forgotten in Thurrock.

[edit] Village history

Chadwell lies on one of the finest gravel beds in the country and is also at the end of the chalk outcrop, thereby overlooking the marshes down to the River Thames and out to the Downs of Kent.

Artifacts found (some of which are in the local museum in Grays) show that the area was inhabited in the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages.

It is known that there was a sizeable non-military Roman settlement to the south of the road between Chadwell and West Tilbury. A Roman oven was found in this location in 1922 containing three complete pots, fragments of others and a small clay lamp, all of which were given to Colchester Museum.

Not much is known of the occupation in Chadwell until the Saxon period of British history but since then it the community has continued to grow over the centuries.

The Domesday Book records, that at the time of the survey, the Bishop of London held the land in this neighbourhood. Later the land was divided into four manors, Chadwell, Ingleby, Longhouse and Biggin (the last three names are kept in perpetuity by local road names).

In more recent times a connection with the writer Daniel Defoe has been intimated, but research by a local historian has proved this unfounded. However it is known he managed and later owned a tile factory on the of Tilbury Marshes and lived in a house on the edge of the river. The confusion may have arisen because a large part of what we know today as Tilbury was in the Parish of Chadwell St Mary and indeed until the early part of the 20th century St Mary's was the Parish Church for Tilbury.

Many people often talk about the famous Moosepack in Chadwell. It is understood from the Moosepack Bible that there is a connection between the Moosepack and Wickham Park (which is in the North East area of Chadwell-St.-Mary.) However there is no trace of the famous Popeye Village. Maybe one day the legendary lost village of Popeye will be found, and the secrets shared with us all.

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