Rochford is truly one of England’s oldest towns, and for centuries the most important in south-east Essex.

Not only was it included in Domesday, of course, but it was then to become the centre of Rochford Hundred, a collection of 26 parishes including Shoebury and Foulness to the east, with the boundary taking in Paglesham and Canewdon and westward up to Hullbridge, then south to Leigh. County subdivisions, “hundreds”, were useful ways of governing in days when communication was slow at best.

Let’s also note that Southend did not come into being until quite late in the 19th century.