[6] There is evidence of a Roman villa or settlement (Noviomagus Icenorum) before then and the town lies on Stane Street, which may have been built on a much earlier track.

Coggeshall is mentioned as Cogheshala in the Domesday Book of 1086 in the ancient hundred of Witham,[8] when it had "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".

"[6][10] Flint and rubble were the main materials used in the construction of the monastery, and the buildings were faced with stone punted up the Blackwater, and locally produced brick.

In 1250 the Abbot of Coggeshall was allowed by Royal Charter to hold an eight-day fair commencing on 31 July – the feast of St. Peter-ad-Vincula, to whom the Parish Church was dedicated.

Colchester complained in 1318 that Coggeshall was a hindrance, and their complaint, being upheld, resulted in the market being moved to Thursday, where it remains to this day.

Revenues across Essex fell to between one third to one half of pre-plague rates; the abbey suffered financially with tenanted and cultivated lands heavily decreased.

[9] The monastery's possessions and lands, totalling nearly 50,000 acres (200 km2), were seized; King Henry VIII granted them to Sir Thomas Seymour.

[18] After the decline of the wool trade, Coggeshall's economy centred around cloth, silk and velvet, with over half of the population employed in its production.

When Parliament repealed the ban in 1826 and later reduced and finally removed duties on French silk, English weavers were unable to compete and Coggeshall's economy was devastated.

[20] The town again found fame in Tambour lace, a form of lace-making introduced to Coggeshall around 1812 by a Monsieur Drago and his daughters.

In 1710 a permanent chapel was built on Stoneham Street for "Protestant Dissenters from the Church of England, commonly called Independents".

That same year James Parnell, a Quaker, caused a disturbance at the church and was sentenced to prison at Colchester Castle where he died whilst imprisoned in 1656.

A permanent oratory was established at White Barn in 1919, with a Mass held at Starling Leeze, the residence of Captain and Mrs Dixon, from 1922.

In 1923 a Mass was held at the Hitcham School every third Sunday using a portable altar, with the closure of this venue the Assembly Room above the Co-operative store was used.

[34] The present church was built in the perpendicular style with 'wool money' during the first quarter of the 15th century; its unusual size is testament to the affluence of the town at the time.

During the Second World War, on 16 September 1940, the Luftwaffe bombed the church causing the roof of the nave to collapse and significant structural damage; repairs were completed in 1956.

The house features elaborate wood panelling and carvings, a testament to the wealth generated by the wool trade in East Anglia.

The Paycocke family moved into Coggeshall in the 15th century and exemplified a trend for successful butchers to acquire large flocks of their own sheep which would produce wool as well as meat.

Although it has undergone extensive reconstruction and its original thatch roof has been replaced with tile, the barn today represents that which existed in the 14th century.

Grange Barn is now open to the public showing a collection of farm carts and wagons, and is available to hire for special events.

[39][40][41] The Coggeshall clock tower was built to celebrate Queen Victoria's jubilee in 1887 and the clockhouse was at one point a school for the poor children of the village and later housed an award-winning tearoom.

Erected in 1892, it is unique in its design, and was made and installed by local blacksmith and social campaigner Henry 'Dick' Nunn after the previous wooden bridge was washed away and authorities refused to replace it.

The saying "A Coggeshall job" was used in Essex from the 17th to the 19th century to mean any poor or pointless piece of work, after the reputed stupidity of its villagers.

There were numerous stories of the inhabitants' ridiculous endeavours, such as chaining up a wheelbarrow in a shed after it had been bitten by a rabid dog, for fear it would go mad.

John Ray's 1670 Collection of English Proverbs gives the following rhyme: Braintree for the pure, Bocking for the poor; Coggeshall for the jeering town, And Kelvedon for the whore.

[46] Other jobs included winching up a cow onto the church roof to eat the grass growing there, knocking down one of two windmills as there would not be enough wind for both of them, attempting to divert the course of the river with hurdles, hanging sheets over roads to prevent the wind from blowing disease into the town, chopping the head off a lamb to free it from a gate, removing stairs from a house to stop flood water entering and some appropriated from other 'fool centres', for example the classic 'fishing for the moon'.

The sixth abbot of Coggeshall's abbey (from 1207 to 1218), Lord Ralph was one of the most important chroniclers of his time, described by the historian E. L. Cutts as "a man of polished erudition, as well as of temperance and arrived at such a degree of excellence in literature as to be esteemed by far the first of the brethren of his convent."

Due to ill health he ceded his title to the seventh abbot, Lord Benedict de Straford in 1218, living quietly in the Abbey until his death in 1228.

Their headquarters were at the Black Horse Inn on Stoneham Street and their success was due to the unpaid and untrained, spare-time parish constables' inability to deal effectively with crime in their local area.

[9] Scholarly works were produced such as Ralph of Coggeshall's Chronicon Anglicanum and John Godard's Concerning the threefold method of calculating[63] alongside the ecclesiastical.