ESSEX RIVERS AND THEIR NAMES. 285
cited hereafter,21 the town got its name, not from the river, but
from the ford (the Stort-ford) by which the Roman road (the
Essex Stane Street) crossed the river at the point at which the
town of Stortford has since grown up.
(4)—The Ching (length about 9 miles) rises in the new lake,
known as Connaught Water, in Epping Forest, and flows south-
westward, through the parishes of Chingford and Walthamstow,
to the Lea. Its name is an invention of the last few years,22 and
has not yet got onto the Ordnance Maps, but I have seen it on a
few other very-modern maps.
(5)—The Roding (length about 35 miles) is the first of the
five rivers rising on the tiny North-Essex watershed already
mentioned. It rises at Chapel End, in the parish of Broxted,
scarcely 300 yards from the source of the Pincey Brook. Thence,
it flows southward through Takeley, the Canfields, the Rodings,
Fyfield, the Ongars, the Staplefords, Woodford, and Wanstead,
to the Thames at Barking.
The name "Roding," as applied to the river, is perplexing.
Johnston regards it23 as probably Keltic; but in this he is
almost certainly in error. Saxton, in 1576, wrote the name
"Rodon"; and Harrison, in 1587, called it24 the "Rodon or
Rodanus." This must have been a fancy spelling merely;
but it has been adopted by some later writers, as Speed (1610),
Morant (1768), and Richard Warner25 (1771). The only other
English river of similar name I have been able to trace is that
known as the "Roden" or "Rodden," which, rising in Com-
bermere Lake, in Cheshire, flows for about twenty miles, through
Whitchurch, to the Severn, near Wroxeter.26
Whatever the origin of the name Roding, there can be no
doubt that it is not really a river-name at all; for, in Essex.
at any rate, all double-element place-names ending in -ing are
derived from the existence of river-side meadows (O.E. ing;
O.N. eng., a meadow).27 Without doubt, the name Roding,
21 See post pp. 287, 292, and 293.
22 I have an impression that the name was invented by our founder, the late Mr.
William Cole. At all events, I remember hearing him and his brothers use it many years ago.
23 Place-Names of Engl. and Wales, p. 20 (1915).
24 Op. cit., p. 51.
25 Plantae Woodfordienses (1771).
26 Leland, writing about 1540, mentions this river (Itinerary, vii., p. 22: 1744); but there
must be, I think, some error in Harrison's statement (op. cit., i., p. 51) that Leland, writing of our
Essex Roding, says that below Ongar, where it receives the Cripsey Brook, it should be known as
the Ivell ; and Harrison himself expresses doubt as to this.
27 The word "ing" though still used in the North of England, is no longer used in Essex,
except in regard to the "saltings" on our coast. These "ings" lie outside the sea wall and are
more or less covered at every high tide.