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Review Article of the Month - November/December 2013
Overview Articles of the Life of Rochford
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November/December Review: Beating the Parish Boundaries
Those who are regular readers of these pages will know that it is our aim to gently prod the awareness of our readers in respect of various facets of the area in which we live. Recently we became aware of a particular feature around the streets of Rochford and Ashingdon and in so doing found some of our preconceived ideas being demolished.
In episodes of Doctor Who, every now and then ‘things’ appeared in the street, ‘things’ that had not been there before, things that mysteriously appeared overnight. I suspect we are all very good at taking for granted things around us, things we give no attention to at all. I was in a talk recently by BT and the lady spoke of the ‘green boxes’ dotted around our streets. I now watch out for ‘green boxes’ and there are quite a lot of them. The feature that suddenly appeared over night, or so it seemed, was Parish Council notice boards. I think Hawkwell Parish must have had money to spend because I have the feeling that we have a number of new boards around the area. Before we go any further look at the pictures below and see if you can say where they each are. You’ll see Rochford have three, Hawkwell have four and Ashingdon have three very humble ones. There may be others around but these appear the only ones in what we refer to (mistakenly it appears!) as the conurbation of Rochford and Ashingdon that runs from Ashingdon Hill to Warners Bridge and to the east of the railway line. It is of course possible that Hawkwell may well have put up another half a dozen by the time this goes on line.
Those who are regular readers of these pages will know that it is our aim to gently prod the awareness of our readers in respect of various facets of the area in which we live. Recently we became aware of a particular feature around the streets of Rochford and Ashingdon and in so doing found some of our preconceived ideas being demolished.
In episodes of Doctor Who, every now and then ‘things’ appeared in the street, ‘things’ that had not been there before, things that mysteriously appeared overnight. I suspect we are all very good at taking for granted things around us, things we give no attention to at all. I was in a talk recently by BT and the lady spoke of the ‘green boxes’ dotted around our streets. I now watch out for ‘green boxes’ and there are quite a lot of them. The feature that suddenly appeared over night, or so it seemed, was Parish Council notice boards. I think Hawkwell Parish must have had money to spend because I have the feeling that we have a number of new boards around the area. Before we go any further look at the pictures below and see if you can say where they each are. You’ll see Rochford have three, Hawkwell have four and Ashingdon have three very humble ones. There may be others around but these appear the only ones in what we refer to (mistakenly it appears!) as the conurbation of Rochford and Ashingdon that runs from Ashingdon Hill to Warners Bridge and to the east of the railway line. It is of course possible that Hawkwell may well have put up another half a dozen by the time this goes on line.
This one isn’t a Council one although it looks similar
Have you ever seen these boards and have you read what is on them?
And how about these boards? This is Hawkwell claiming territory - and with good cause (see below)
These three boards, quite close together indicate the simplicity and humility of the Ashingdon approach - and they actually put the Agenda of their next meeting on their bigger boards. How’s that for keeping people informed! (They may have another out at South Fambridge because they are the parish of Ashingdon and South Fambridge, but that is beyond Rochford Life’s boundaries, sorry)
Ashingdon is the only web-site to have maps on it. Hawkwell have these maps of footpaths in their parish on two of their boards (the right hand boundary is Ashingdon Road. Rochford appear to have no map showing their area.
It takes a big OS map to spell out the truth that these boards suggest. The dark blue lines are the parish boundaries, so in the south is Rochford, in the West is Hawkwell and in the north is Ashingdon and South Fambridge.
Suddenly all our preconceived ideas are blown to bits. As far as the conurbation is concerned, Ashingdon is just a tiny bit north of Brays Lane and east of the Ashingdon Road, and Hawkwell, yes Hawkwell, are the land grabbers taking everything to the west of Ashingdon Road and north of Ironwell Lane. And to think we used to think that Hawkwell was only that bit to the east of Hockley on the other side of the railway! No wonder they needed to stake their claim loud and clear. Sorry Hawkwell. For interest, below is the area back in the sixteenth century. Mouse-scroll it larger and you’ll see how undeveloped it was.
So why is all this so important? We’ll have to go to another page to consider that.
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