Quendon and Rickling is a
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 authorit ...
in the
Uttlesford
Uttlesford is a local government district in Essex, England. Its council is based in the market town of Saffron Walden. At the 2011 Census, the population of the district was 79,443. Other notable settlements include Great Dunmow, Elmdon, S ...
district of
Essex
Essex () is a Ceremonial counties of England, 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 Riv ...
,
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...
with an area of 2,048 acres. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 was 587. It is a
linear settlement
A linear settlement is a (normally small to medium-sized) settlement or group of buildings that is formed in a long line. Many of these settlements are formed along a transport route, such as a road, river, or canal. Others form due to physical re ...
on the B1383 (formerly the A11 trunk road) between Saffron Walden and Bishops Stortford. Quendon & Rickling stand 300 feet above sea level on a
watershed
Watershed is a hydrological term, which has been adopted in other fields in a more or less figurative sense. It may refer to:
Hydrology
* Drainage divide, the line that separates neighbouring drainage basins
* Drainage basin, called a "watershe ...
between two rivers: the
Cam to the east, flowing north through
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...
to the
Ouse
Ouse may refer to:
Places Rivers in England
* River Ouse, Yorkshire
* River Ouse, Sussex
* River Great Ouse, Northamptonshire and East Anglia
** River Little Ouse, a tributary of the River Great Ouse
Other places
* Ouse, Tasmania, a town in Aus ...
flowing on to
the Wash
The Wash is a rectangular bay and multiple estuary at the north-west corner of East Anglia on the East coast of England, where Norfolk meets Lincolnshire and both border the North Sea. One of Britain's broadest estuaries, it is fed by the riv ...
.
Etymology
The parish and its name were created on 1 April 1949 by the merger of
Quendon and
Rickling parishes. The name Quendon derives from the Old English and which means the ‘women’s valley’. Rickling derives from an Old English personal name ''Ricula'' with a suffix meaning 'descendants' or 'followers', thus ‘the people of Ricula’. The wife of King
Sledda of the East Saxons (c.587-604) and sister of
Æthelberht of Kent
Æthelberht (; also Æthelbert, Aethelberht, Aethelbert or Ethelbert; ang, Æðelberht ; 550 – 24 February 616) was King of Kent from about 589 until his death. The eighth-century monk Bede, in his ''Ecclesiastical History of the Engli ...
was named Ricula, though an association with this manor has not been proven.
History
People were living in the area over ten thousand years ago because of the Neolithic and Palaeolithic remains found. The village of Rickling was mentioned in the Doomsday Book of 1086. In circa 1200 the churches of the parish were built.
Both villages are known for their halls:
Quendon Hall and
Rickling Hall, where until the 1960s most of the parish was employed to work the farms of the estates. The parish mostly consists of 17th Century housing; between 1951 and 1961 the number of houses increased from 171 to only 172. This is shown by the attempts to create a conservation area. The population was recorded at 557 in the 1951 census, decreasing to 514 by 2001.
The conjoined settlement contains two churches: St Simon & St Jude, Quendon and All Saints, Rickling, which are both over 800 years old.
See also
*
The Hundred Parishes
The Hundred Parishes is an area of the East of England with no formal recognition or status, albeit that the concept has the blessing of county and district authorities. It encompasses around 450 square miles (1,100 square kilometres) of northwes ...
References
{{coord, 51.950, 0.199, type:city(514)_region:GB-ESS, display=title
Civil parishes in Essex
Uttlesford