Bradwell or Bradwell Juxta Coggeshall is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority ...

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

, England. It is located on the River Blackwater, approximately east of Braintree and is north-northeast from the county town of

Chelmsford Chelmsford () is a city in the City of Chelmsford district in the county of Essex, England. It is the county town of Essex and one of three cities in the county, along with Southend-on-Sea and Colchester. It is located north-east of London a ...

. The village is in the

district A district is a type of administrative division that, in some countries, is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or counties, several municipalities, subdivisions o ...

and

parliamentary constituency An electoral district, also known as an election district, legislative district, voting district, constituency, riding, ward, division, or (election) precinct is a subdivision of a larger state (a country, administrative region, or other poli ...

of Braintree. The parish is part of the Blackwater parish cluster. The name can be confused with Bradwell-on-Sea, also in

, which is often abbreviated to just ''Bradwell''. The name derives from Old English meaning broad well. To this day there is a spring a few metres north of the modern manor house of Bradwell Hall near to Holy Trinity Church. In the Middle Ages, this spring fed an overshot mill. Remains of the last mill on the site can still be seen in the overgrown surroundings of the millpool. Bradwell is a dispersed village. There is no good evidence that the village was ever nucleated around the church. The modern village, on the A120 between Braintree and Coggeshall, is the former hamlet of Blackwater (also once known as Blackwater Green) by which name it was known into the twentieth century. There is evidence for settlement in Bradwell as far back as the late

Mesolithic The Mesolithic (Greek: μέσος, ''mesos'' 'middle' + λίθος, ''lithos'' 'stone') or Middle Stone Age is the Old World archaeological period between the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The term Epipaleolithic is often used synonymous ...

period; some tools such as

knapping Knapping is the shaping of flint, chert, obsidian, or other conchoidal fracturing stone through the process of lithic reduction to manufacture stone tools, strikers for flintlock firearms, or to produce flat-faced stones for building or facing ...

stones and arrowheads have been uncovered. There are crop marks and some funerary remains attesting to Bronze Age settlers; excavations in the 1970s uncovered a large Iron Age ditch. One other probably Iron Age site remains unexcavated. Bradwell's prehistory is mostly unexplored. Of Roman settlement there is scant evidence. Scattered building remains in one field to the east of the church suggest a farmstead, and Roman coins and pottery have occurred sporadically. The Romans did, however, build the road now known as the A120, running from Colchester to St Albans. In the 1850s the rebuilding of the bridge over the River Blackwater found Roman remains, including a horseshoe. The whereabouts of these remains is uncertain. Before about 1140, the signs of Bradwell either in the historic or the archaeological record are small. There is one piece of evidence: a late Saxon document lists the estate of Glazenwood in Bradwell. The estate, perhaps little changed, remains. Bradwell, however, does not occur in

Domesday Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

although there is evidence to suggest that its entry is linked with that of nearby Kelvedon.

References

External links

Villages in Essex Civil parishes in Essex Braintree District {{Essex-geo-stub