Thaxted, Essex 4.59

Thaxted is a town and civil parish in the Uttlesford district of northwestern Essex, England.HistoryThaxted appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as "Tachesteda", Old English for 'place where thatch was got.' Once a centre of cutlery manufacture, Thaxted went into decline with the rise of Sheffield as a major industrial centre. A light railway, the Elsenham & Thaxted Light Railway, eventually opened in 1913, though the railway itself never reached nearer than three-quarters of a mile (1.2 km) from the town, as building earthworks across the River Chelmer proved too costly. With the growth of road transport, the line was closed to passengers in 1952 and closed altogether in 1953. The name of Cutler's Green, a small hamlet about a mile to the west of Thaxted, recalls the trade that yielded the area's early wealth. To the West of Cutler's Green is an area named 'Richmond's in the Wood'.GovernanceAn electoral ward in the same name exists. The population of this ward at the 2011 census was 3,512.DemographyThaxted's population of around 2,000 has remained almost unchanged down the centuries. Thaxted had a total of 2,845 residents according to the 2011 Census. In 1829 there were 2,293 people living in Thaxted; in 1848 there were 2,527. At the time of the 1881 census that figure had fallen to 1,914, and fell further by 1921 to 1,596. In 2001, the population was 2,526.