Langdon Hills
Langdon Hills is a township located in the Basildon district of Essex, England. It is contiguous with the Basildon continuous urban area.
It is located south of Laindon railway station on the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway. It is the location of the 400-acre (1.6 km2) Langdon Hills Country Park, which is in the unitary authority of Thurrock.[1] In 1767, Arthur Young commented on the view from Langdon Hills
- "…near Horndon, on the summit of a vast hill, one of the most astonishing prospects to be beheld, breaks almost at once upon one of the dark lanes. Such a prodigious valley, everywhere painted with the finest verdure, and intersected with numberless hedges and woods, appears beneath you, that it is past description; the Thames winding thro’ it, full of ships and bounded by the hills of Kent. Nothing can exceed it…"[2]
North of the railway station and line, in Basildon district, is Laindon. Laindon and Langdon Hills are part of the Basildon post town.[3]
Until its abolition in 1936, Langdon Hills was a civil parish, part of the Orsett Poor Law Union.[4] In 1936, it became part of the Thurrock Urban District. The area covered by the traditional parish of Langdon Hills is in the Unitary Authority of Thurrock.
In 1931 it covered an area of 1,816 acres (7.35 km2) and had a population of 2,103. 100 years earlier, in 1831, the population was 224 and the area covered was 1,850 acres (7.5 km2).[5]
The village has a church (St. Johns Church), two schools (Great Berry Primary School and Lincewood School). It has a nature reserve stretching down to Laindon. It also has a Tesco superstore in the village boundaries. Langdon Hills has a small village area as the new district of Great Berry is placed just north of Tesco.
References
- ^ Thurrock BC - Langdon Hills Country Park
- ^ Arthur Young, A Six Weeks' Tour through the Southern Counties of England and Wales
- ^ Royal Mail, Address Management Guide, (2004)
- ^ Vision of Britain
- ^ Vision of Britain - Langdon Hills parish (historic map)
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