Ernest Godman, writing in Home Counties magazine quotes the historian Philip Morant as saying the name "appears to have been taken from the place now called Barstable Hall, in Langdon and Basildon ... which being near the centre of the Hundred, was then the most convenient place for holding Courts, and transacting all affairs of a public nature."

[citation needed] During the Saxon period, the men of the hundred met to discuss local issues and to conduct judicial trials.

[6] Reaney says, "The old hall was near the junction of the boundaries of the parishes of Laindon, Corringham, Vange and Basildon".

[7] According to Godman, "the manor-house had disappeared before Morant's time, a farmhouse being built in a lower situation.

The modern district of Barstable in Basildon new town is largely in the traditional parish of Vange.

[11] [12] Canvey Island, which was also in the Barstable hundred, was divided among a number of nearby parishes.