Origins of the Area Names

We call ourselves CARA – the Creffield Area Residents’ Association.  Everyone knows Creffield Road, and there is a Creffield Conservation Area. But where does the Creffield name come from? 

It comes from the Creffield Family, and this in turn leads us to Colchester in Essex. There were a number of influential Essex families related to each other through marriage, in particular the Creffields, Grays, Rounds and Weggs. The Creffields were a family of Dutch descent whose name possibly derives from the German town of Krefeld, just across the Dutch border. 

In about 1723 Charles Gray, MP for Colchester, married Sarah, the widow of Ralph Creffield, and about the same time George Wegg, a Colchester merchant, married Ralph’s daughter Hannah. From this union sprang the Weggs of Acton whose lands were inherited in 1842 by Charles Gray Round, MP, of Birch Hall, Essex. Several of the street names in the CARA neighbourhood have associations that derive from these families and their links with Colchester and the villages to its south-west.

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  • Creffield Road takes its name from the Creffield family.
  • Birch Grove is linked to the parishes of Great Birch and Little Birch and to Little Birch Hall, purchased by James Round, Master of the Stationers’ Company, in 1724.
  • Buxton Gardens named after Capt. Henry Fowell Buxton (23 Jan 1876 – 16 Jan 1949),  who married Katharine Tayspel Round, daughter of Rt. Hon. James Round and Sybilla Joanna Freeland, on 24 Jul 1900. He worked as a Director of Truman, Hanbury & Buxton Brewers.
  • Freeland Road named after Anthony Wood Freeland of Lincoln’s Inn. He was the brother-in-law of a nephew of Charles Gray Round MP and one of the trustees of the will.
  • Inglis Road named after James Inglis of Colchester, a solicitor and one of the trustees of the will of Charles Gray Round MP
  • Layer Gardens Layer de la Haye, known locally as Layer, is a village to the south west of Colchester, close to Birch Hall. 
  • Lexden Road The Round family home, Birch Hall, is in Lexden, now a suburb of Colchester. It also gives its name to the Lexden Hundred, first recorded in the Domesday Book and containing the parishes of Birch and Stanway.
  • Stanway Gardens Stanway is now a suburb of Colchester.
  • Twyford Avenue formerly known as Wegg Avenue.
Miss Creffield