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THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB.
best kind of pressure boards, drying paper, vasculum, &c., for use in collecting
and preserving plants.
Some appreciative remarks were made by Prof. Boulger and Mr. Fitch, and a
very hearty vote of thanks was passed to Mr. Shenstone.
[Mr. W. H. Dalton, who had passed two or three days in the district previous
to the meeting, had prepared some notes on the geology and Natural History
of the neighbourhood which time did not allow of being read. They will be
found ante, pp. 79-84.]
" A small town in Essex, with a population that was nearly 4000 until the
'sixties,' and is now nearer 2000, Coggeshall is familiar, even by name, only to
a few. In the past, however, through the middle ages, it was one of the most
important towns of the eastern counties. Its prominence was due to the influx
of white-robed Cistercians in the time of Stephen, and when they vanished, with
the inhabitants of other monastic establishments, makers of white robe-textures
St. Nicholas Chapel. From "History of Coggeshall."
came in their place. The town was known even until this century for its textile
manufactures, of which the 'Coggeshall Whites' were for long a standard of
excellence. But even two miles distance from a railway is a heavy handicap in
the struggle for existence, and this industry has passed, from the districts into
which the Flemings brought it, to the Yorkshire towns. Isinglass and gelatine
alone now maintain the old industrial character of Coggeshall."1
The town lies on the old Roman road from Verulamium to Camulodunum,
and consists of two parishes, intersected by the ancient course of the Blackwater.
The name was shortened to Coxall in the middle ages, and three cocks appear
upon the Abbey shield. "Hence it has been thought that this is the real mean-
ing of the name, and that it may be traced to the Anglo-Saxon cocc—a cock.
But were the cocks anything more than a monkish fancy ? We have in Cheshire
1 "The Antiquary," vol. xxi., 197 (May, 1890).