Wadesmill: Ermine Street

Image: © Nigel Cox Taken: 25 Nov 2007

Ermine Street is an old Roman road. Normally these are very straight but occasionally, as here, the straightness principle was abandoned in order to overcome some particular geographical obstacle, probably in this case the crossing of the River Rib. There is an interesting historical name change going on in this village too. If you look at old Ordnance Survey 6" to the mile maps the whole settlement along Ermine Street on either side of the River Rib was shown as Wadesmill, while Thundridge was the name of the much larger parish centred on the church Image at the top of the hill at the southern end of the village. Certainly this naming arrangement was recorded as recently as the map edition of 1950, where the word Thundridge can only be found by zooming out of the mapping to show the whole parish. However all the current editions of the OS mapping now refer to Thundridge as the settlement on the south side of the river while Wadesmill has migrated so that it now only covers the village on the north side. There is too a howler in the current OS 1:25,000 scale mapping which refers to Thundridge as Thunderidge.

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