A bustling city within the county of Essex within the east of England, United Kingdom, Braintree at present has a inhabitants of round 42,000, considerably bigger than the small village which existed in pre-Roman instances some 4,000 years in the past.
When the Romans invaded Britain, the east of England was one among their strongholds, and what’s now Braintree developed from an current settlement on the junction of two roads which the Romans had put in place. Although the Roman settlement was later deserted, as their maintain on Britain weakened, the village continued to exist by way of the Saxon interval, and by the point of the Norman conquest, was often called Branchetreu, and was listed as such within the Domesday Guide.
The origin of the title of the city is considerably unsure, and there are a number of theories as to the way it happened. It appears unlikely that it was named after the River Mind (as is the case with many English cities), as it’s typically thought that the city really gave its title to the river, somewhat than the opposite means spherical. Maybe extra doubtless is that it got here from the Previous English Branoc’s tree, Branoc merely being a household title.
Within the centuries following the Norman conquest the village prospered and grew because it grew to become a preferred stopping off level for Pilgrims. Braintree was granted its constitution to carry a weekly market in 1190, an occasion which attracted folks from the encompassing areas and elevated the wealth of the village. Braintree later grew to become well-known for its wool commerce, a talent launched by Flemish immigrants throughout the early seventeenth century.
Braintree suffered a extreme blow in 1665, when the Nice Plague hit the village, and worn out one third of the inhabitants. The wool commerce was changed by the silk trade by the nineteenth century and agriculture was nonetheless an vital supply of earnings a lot because it had from the early days.
Modern-day Braintree is a busy commuter city with glorious street and rail hyperlinks with London, Colchester and Chelmsford.
