Langdon Hills

This is famous as the second highest point in Essex. The hilliness of these parishes was often cited as the cause of the ‘Pure Air and Good Health’ lauded in the property advertisements. The old Laindon High Street had about 120 shops spreading in twos or threes from the Fortune of War down past the station to Langdon Hills.
An extract from from"Basildon - A History & Celebration".

IMAGINE an area of low-lying marshland riddled with secret smugglers’ paths and tales of Wat Tyler’s doomed revolt. Dense woodland once covered the surrounding fields, and the wharf was busy with timber ships. For centuries the Basildon area sheltered a few small villages whose livelihoods were based on agriculture and timber; here there were quiet roads and lanes, and ancient farmhouses and cottages that barely altered. Then at the end of the 19th century there came a period of great change for south-east Essex. The Fenchurch Street railway line had reached Laindon and Pitsea by 1888, which gave Londoners the chance to escape from the city to the countryside for holidays and weekends. A unique landscape emerged here in the first half of the 20th century: randomly scattered on the heavy Essex clay, self-built cottages on plots of varying size multiplied to form what officials described as a vast rural slum. But for those who lived there, despite the somewhat primitive conditions the little plots offered a refuge from the slums of London, and later from the risk of air raids in the Second World War.
An extract from from"Basildon - A History & Celebration".

In the medieval manorial rolls there are references to ancient roads and lanes that carry the same names today. A field known as Joiners Hill on the south corner of St Nicholas Lane at the entrance from High Road is shown on the 1839 Laindon Tithe Map, and it is thought that the route via Laindon High Road and St Nicholas Way was used by many pilgrims on their way to Canterbury; it was a busy trade route from the 1500s. In addition to the difficulty of travelling over bad roads in the 18th and 19th centuries, murderers and thieves abounded, and farmers coming home from market would travel together for protection. In 1815 two Laindon men were robbed on their way home from Rumford (now Romford) market.
An extract from from"Basildon - A History & Celebration".

In the medieval manorial rolls there are references to ancient roads and lanes that carry the same names today. A field known as Joiners Hill on the south corner of St Nicholas Lane at the entrance from High Road is shown on the 1839 Laindon Tithe Map, and it is thought that the route via Laindon High Road and St Nicholas Way was used by many pilgrims on their way to Canterbury; it was a busy trade route from the 1500s. In addition to the difficulty of travelling over bad roads in the 18th and 19th centuries, murderers and thieves abounded, and farmers coming home from market would travel together for protection. In 1815 two Laindon men were robbed on their way home from Rumford (now Romford) market.
An extract from from"Basildon - A History & Celebration".

Laindon and Langdon Hills had always been separate villages with long histories, and even appeared as separate entries in the 1086 Domesday Book. Laindon took its name from the River Lyge, a lost tributary of the River Crouch, which rose from the hill on which St Nicholas’s Church stands and is responsible for the extreme dampness of the graves dug in the churchyard. The Lynge, a road in Laindon, was named after it, but no longer exists. In 1777 Chapman and Andre refer to Langdon clay, a clear indication of the nature of the soil here. The first part of the name Langdon Hills means ‘long hill’, which it certainly is, and the highest point in Essex.
An extract from from"Basildon - A History & Celebration".