RESIDENTS in a picturesque town are embarking on an ambitious £76,000 project to chronicle its history.

Coggeshall Heritage Society plans to record the age of each individual property in the town – some going back as far as the 14th century – to show how the town developed over the centuries.

The group first mooted the idea seven years ago, after former local pharmacists Stanley and Eileen Prentice, left money in their wills to fund such a project.

After struggling to find the rest of the money needed, the society has now been awarded £48,200 from the Heritage Lottery Fund towards the three-year project, which is expect to cost a total of £76,400.

Project manager Alan Willis said: “There’s nothing comprehensive on Coggeshall’s history. We have about 200 listed buildings, but the listing doesn’t necessarily include the dates they were built.

“We want to produce a good database for all the buildings in Coggeshall.

“It was a wool town. There was obviously a lot of building activity when the economy was good in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries.

“We want to find out how the development of the town went with the wool trade.”

The heritage society will mostly concentrate on buildings once used by weavers and people connected with the wool trade.

It will work with the Essex Historic Buildings Group on detailed surveys, using tree-ring dating techniques on timber buildings and studying old documents, such as 16th-century Latin surveys which document the town’s buildings and the people who occupied them.

Villagers and schoolchildren will be invited to workshops, to re-enact historical scenes and help to develop a website and maybe even publish a book.