Journal of Proceedings. xxxv
of 'Barnaby Budge.' Forty years had gone by, and yet the village could
have little changed since Dickens first saw it. It remained an illustration,
and a most pleasing one, of an old country hamlet, the like of which
Washington Irving and Miss Mitford described so charmingly in their
books, and Mr. Caldecott drew with such graphic beauty; yet not ten
miles from London! Search the city round in double the radius they
would not find its equal. The village gives its name to a parish in the
Hundred of Ongar, and in years gone by was contained in the great forest
of Essex, when the forests now known as Epping and Hainhault met on
the banks of the Boding and formed one great woodland. The speaker
examined the derivation of the name (which is spelled in many ways in
old records), tracing it to the two Saxon words "cing" and "well" or
"Kings-well." Of the seven manors comprised in the parish, two,
Chigwell and Woolston, according to Domesday Book, were royal
demesnes, Earl Harold holding them of Edward the Confessor; hence
the first syllable. To find the origin of the second they must go to the
hamlet of Chigwell Bow ; and in an old MS. about the year 1746 he read—
"If any credit is to be given to ancient report, we may reasonably
conclude that the salutary effect of this water was well known ages ago,
the place where it issued out being signified with the name of King's
Well—for Chigwell is only a corruption of King's Well, C and Ch in the
Saxon language having the power of K, but by losing that power and
dropping the N the name was ridiculously (sic) converted into Chig."
. . . . "This much injured tho' useful water is found issuing out of the
declivity out of the rising hill on the south side of the wind-mill, in the
Wood or Forest." . . . . "This is supposed to be the old well, and in all
probability was so, as the vestiges of some kind of building appear at this
day. Another opening is discovered to ye west of this hill, and a third
well has been lately dug on the north side of the same hill, in a field
behind the house called Whitehall, which proves to be more strongly
impregnated with mineral qualities than either of the other two." Also
Dr. Frewin, born at Chigwell Bow, and celebrated in his day, says—
"This county, especially the hilly parts of it, has been remarkable for the
variety of medicinal waters, which have been taken notice of from time to
time by several able physicians and historians; and upon a strict
examination I find that the water which vents itself at several openings
at Chigwell is as much deserving of notice as any in the county, and I
doubt not will be found as efficacious in many chronical diseases as any
in the kingdom." Here, then, they had evidence of the existence of these
wells early in the last century. But the name of the village carried them
back to Saxon times, and it is not impossible that our Roman conquerors
may have visited it. The Romans understood the value of mineral springs
and the bath, and at several of our English springs their presence has
been established. In Essex they had plenty of evidence of their occupation.
In their own neighbourhood, at Leyton, and in the town of Ongar, and
even within the borders of Chigwell parish, remains had been found