Place:High Roding, Essex, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of High Roding from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:

"ROOTHING (High), a parish, with a village, in Dunmow district, Essex; on the river Roding, 3¾ miles S S W of Great Dunmow, and 8 E N E of Sawbridgeworth [railway] station. Post-town, Dunmow, under Chelmsford. Acres: 1,803. Real property: £2,823. Population: 469. Houses: 110. The property is subdivided. The manor was given, in the time of the Confessor, to a monastery in the Isle of Ely. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Rochester. Value: £391. Patron: the Earl of Roden. The church was recently restored. There is a parochial school."

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

High Roding is one of The Rodings (or Roothings) - a group of villages in Essex, England, the largest group in the country to bear a common name. They are believed to be the remnants of a single Anglo-Saxon community known as the Hroðingas, led by Hroða, who sailed up the River Thames and along a tributary in the sixth century and settled in the area. This was one of the sub-kingdoms that were absorbed into the Kingdom of Essex. The River Roding and the villages derived their name from Hroda. The typical pronunciation of the name is "Roadings". The Rodings formed a single land unit that was investigated by Stephen Basset.

The villages are recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Rodinges in the Hundred of Dunmow. In the time of Edward the Confessor, it was held by the Abbey of St Æthelthryth of Ely; however, after the Norman Conquest, part was taken by William de Warenne. Part was also held by the de Veres and de Mandevilles families, who became the Earls of Oxford and Earls of Essex. By the 14th century, the boundaries and names of the villages had become fairly established.

High Roding was part of the Dunmow Rural District from 1894 until 1974. Since 1974 it has been located in the Uttlesford District of Essex.

Research Tips

• A map of Dunmow Rural District, marked as D14.
• The Recorders of Ucclesford History provides a series of webpages on most of the parishes in Ucclesford District. They also host transcriptions from various parishes provided by local family history societies.
• Rollason, Pam (June 2008). "Around the Rodings". Essex Life (Archant). p. 92.
• Andrew Reynolds, "Later Anglo-Saxon England" (Tempus, 2002, page 67) drawing on S Bassett (ed) The Origin of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms (Leicester, 1989)
• Basset, Stephen (1997). "Continuity and fission in the Anglo-Saxon landscape: the origins of the Rodings (Essex)". Landscape History 19: 25–42.
• Essex Record Office handles Essex archives within the county. The address is Wharf Road, Chelmsford, Essex CM2 6YT.
• The Essex Society for Family History covers topics of genealogical interest throughout the present County of Essex (i.e. excluding the western area now in Greater London). Subscription necessary.
• GENUKI provides a list of towns and parishes leading to pages for individual parishes with useful local information for genealogists and family historians.
• Wikimedia Commons has a set of maps of the old hundreds of Essex. These do not show the individual parishes within the hundreds.
• For very detailed investigation Wikimedia Commons also has a series of 176 part maps of the Ordnance Survey 1st series 1:10560, Map of Essex
• FamilySearch lists its collections of church records and vital records along with those provided by other organizations, both commercial and voluntary.
• The commercial website FindMyPast also has a collection of wills and newspaper transcriptions, as well as the "1939 Register" (an equivalent to the census gathered at the beginning of World War 2).
• A Vision of Britain through Time is a website produced by the Department of Geography of the University of Portsmouth. It outlines all parishes as they were in the 19th century.
• British History Online has transcribed eight volumes of the Victoria County History project for Essex. Seven of these cover the history of parts of the county in great detail, although the project is incomplete for Essex as a whole. Ownership of land through the centuries can often be traced here. The volumes of note are as follows:

Volume 4, Ongar Hundred, including Chipping and High Ongar, Chigwell, Stondon Massey and Theydon Bois (26 parishes in all).

Volume 5, Becontree Hundred outside Greater London. A thematic account of the growth of metropolitan Essex since 1850. Also contains topographical accounts of Barking, Ilford, Dagenham and other areas of Essex now within Greater London.

Volume 6, parishes of Becontree Hundred now within the London boroughs of Newham, Waltham Forest and Redbridge. These include West and East Ham, Walthamstow and Wanstead.

Volume 7, Covers the ancient parishes, formerly within the Liberty of Havering-atte-Bower and now within the London borough of Havering, and those in Chafford hundred in western Essex now bordering London. It includes accounts of Hornchurch, Romford, Havering.

Volume 8, accounts of the parishes of Chafford and Harlow Hundreds, including Brentwood, Harlow and Thurrock.

Volume 9, the Borough of Colchester, describes the life of the oldest and for long the largest town in Essex from the Iron Age to 1990.

Volume 10, Lexden Hundred (part), includes Dedham, Earls Colne and Wivenhoe and other parishes to the north and west of Colchester.

• As of June 2019 Ancestry (Worldwide subscription required) includes Essex, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812, these early records are from parish registers of baptisms and burials during the years 1538–1812, and marriages during the years 1538-1754. These are in addition to their previous holdings:

• Essex, England, Church of England Births and Baptisms, 1813-1918: 3,937,941 records
• Essex, England, Church of England Marriages, 1754-1935: 1,968,439 records
• Essex, England, Church of England Deaths and Burials, 1813-1994: 730,118 records