HISTORY OF THE VILLAGE
Chadwell lies on one of the finest gravel beds in the country and is also at the end of the chalk outcrop, thereby overlooking the marshes down to the River Thames and out to the Downs of Kent.
Artefacts found (some of which are in the local museum in Grays) show that the area was inhabited in the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages.
It is known that there was a sizeable non-military Roman settlement to the south of the road between Chadwell and West Tilbury. A Roman oven was found in this location in 1922 containing three complete pots, fragments of others and a small clay lamp, all of which were given to Colchester Museum.
Not much is known of the occupation in Chadwell until the Saxon period of British history but since then it the community has continued to grow over the centuries.
The Domesday Book records, that at the time of the survey, the Bishop of London held the land in this neighbourhood. Later the land was divided into four manors, Chadwell, Ingleby, Longhouse and Biggin (the last three names may be familiar to you and local road names keep them in perpetuity).
In more recent times a connection with the writer Daniel Defoe has been intimated, but research by a local historian has proved this unfounded. However it is known he managed and later owned a tile factory on the of Tilbury Marshes and lived in a house on the edge of the river. The confusion may have arisen because a large part of what we know today as Tilbury was in the Parish of Chadwell St Mary and indeed until the early part of the 20th century St Mary's was the Parish Church for Tilbury.