Photographs of Coggeshall

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Coggeshall is mentioned in the Domesday Book as Cogheshal. The Manor of Coggeshall was owned by a Saxon freeman named Cogga, and at the time of its entry there was "a mill; about 60 men with ploughs and horses, oxen and sheep; woodland with swine and a swineherd, four stocks of bees and one priest".
The modern history of Coggeshall begins around 1140 when King Stephen and his queen Matilda, founded a large Savigniac abbey with 12 monks from Savigy in France, the last to be established before the order was absorbed by the Cistercians in 1147. The chapel of St. Nicholas was built around 1220.
The monks farmed sheep, and their skilled husbandry developed a high quality wool that formed the foundation of the town's prosperous cloth trade during the 15th to mid-18th centuries. It was the wool merchants who built St Peter ad Vincula in the 15th century. Most of the old town dates from this era.