The following was published on the Letters page of ‘Essex Life’ in December 2008. It was my response to a query raised by a reader in an earlier edition. It was published word for word but excluded the study references which I give below. ‘Essex Life’, formerly the ‘Essex Countryside’ magazine, has a history of its own, having been first published in the autumn of 1952.
Your correspondent, M Bryant (September 2008), is right that there were once nine Roding parishes. Morell Roding (not Moral Roding), was once part of White Roding (or Roothing) and had its church at Cammas Hall, which is now a well-advertised fruit farm [note 1]. The farm [note 2] is just to the north of the A1060, Chelmsford to Bishops Stortford road, and about two miles south of Hatfield Broad Oak. The chapel building was for a long time used as a pigeon-house before being demolished by 1860 [note 3]. The name is thought to derive from a Geoffrey Morell who held the manor in 1377 [note 4]. The size of Morell Roding’s population was small, being no more than 40 and comprising of no more than four farms [note 5]. The whole Roding area, then as now, is made up of sparsely populated agricultural communities “which produce heavy crops of wheat and fine barley” [note 6].
Notes
1. For example, see advertisement sign on A414 immediately north of M11 junction 7.
2. http://www.chff.co.uk
3. Durant. Handbook For Essex (1887)
4. http://www.ihbc.org.uk/context_archive/17/Cammas%20Hall%20and%20its%20Late%2014c%20Cross%20Wing_dir/Cammas%20Hall%20and%20its%20Late%2014c%20Cross%20Wing_s.htm
5. Barham, Andrew. Lost Parish Churches of Essex (1990)
6. Coller. The People’s History of Essex (1861)
Andrew Smith
Blackmore, Essex
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