290 THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
to the bifurcation of the road53 or river ; and it is certainly ap-
propriate in the case of the Crouch, owing to the curious angle at
which the Roch joins it. There is, I believe, no other English
river so named.
(10).—The Roch, Roach, or Broomhills River (length
about 12 miles) has several sources on the high ground just east
of the town of Rayleigh. From these, small streams flow more
or less eastward, towards the town of Rochford, near which they
combine to form the considerable waterway known as the Roch
or Roach. This, flowing on eastward, receives the Potton and
Yokefleet Creeks, and ultimately joins the Crouch, as stated
already. The Roch is another river which, considering the
shortness of its course, has a remarkable estuary, more than
twice as long as itself.
There can be no doubt that the name Roch or Roach is not a
true old river-name, but a very-modern back-formation, taken,
like Stortford,54 from the name of a ford—that through the river
in the town of Rochford. The modernity of the name Roch is
shown by the fact that no writer who wrote before the early
part of last century uses it, so far as I can discover.55 It is not
named on Jeffery's Map of about 1720. Chapman and Andre
(1777), Cary (1824), Greenwood (1825), and other cartographers
of the period all call it the "Broom-hill River." This name was
taken, no doubt, from the "Broom-hills" on its north bank,
close to the town of Rochford, but actually in the parish of Little
Stambridge.56
(11).—The Chelmer (length about 35 miles) is the second
of the rivers rising on the remarkable small watershed, already
noticed, in the extreme north-west of the county.57 It rises at
Wimbish Green and flows southward through Thaxted, Tilty,
and the Eastons, to Dunmow, where it turns more eastward,
continuing through or past Barnston, Felsted, the Walthams,
Chelmsford, the Baddows, and Langford, to Maldon, where it
is joined by the Pant or Blackwater and both together flow into
the spacious estuary known by the latter name.
53 The junction of roads at Myland, just north of Colchester, was known as "Mylande-
crouche" in 1301 (see Manwood's Forest Lawes, fo. 152 rev. : 1615). At Crouch Green, in Castle
Hedingham, three roads join.
54. See ante, p. 285.
55 There is, however, in Lancashire, a River Roch or Roach, 10 miles long, flowing through
Rochdale. Its name is, perhaps, also a back-formation.
56 These are, no doubt, artificial hills on which "brooms" (that is, bunches of brushwood
lied to poles) were set up as guides to navigators.
57. See ante, p. 276.