Ingatestone

History

Ingatestone is one of a number of villages on or near the river Wid to contain an old name, Ing. It is thought that this was the name of a large district that encompassed these places, found in the Domesday Book as Ginga or Inga, part of the Chelmsford Hundred. Its etymology is uncertain, but Eilert Ekwall has proposed the reconstructed Old English name *Gigingas or similar as the original name of the district. He connects this with OE gē (equivalent of Gothic gawi), meaning "district". Gawi is posited as the base of Gauingen in Germany, and is found in several personal names. Ekwall suggests *Gēga or *Giga as possible Essex-dialect personal names (derived from gē) from which *Gigingas (possibly "the people of Giga") may derive. The territory gradually fragmented into smaller manors and parishes, which took various prefixes and suffixes to distinguish them. it was recorded as Gynges atte Ston in 1283, and as Inge atte Stone in 1433. Fryerning was the Inga of the friars, referring to its ownership by the Knights Hospitallers. Mountnessing was the Inga owned by the Mounteney family, and Margaretting was the Inga with the church dedicated to St Margaret. Buttsbury to the east was historically also called Ginge. Ingatestone appeared in Saxon times on the Essex Great Road (now the A12) between the Roman towns of Londinium (London) and Camulodunum (Colchester). The village is built on boulder clay lands. The village stone, deposited by glacial action, is unusual for the area. A large Sarsen stone can still be seen, split into three, with one piece by the west door of the St Edmund and St Mary's parish church and one each side of the entrance to Fryerning Lane. Ingatestone belonged to Barking Abbey from about 950 AD until the Dissolution of the Monasteries, when it was…