Chigwell

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Template:Infobox England place Chigwell is a civil parish in the Epping Forest district of Essex.

Chigwell is 11.6 miles (18.7 km) north east of Charing Cross and near the boundary with the London Borough of Redbridge. It is served by a London Underground station and has a London (020) area code.

Traditionally a rural farming community, but now largely suburban, Chigwell was mentioned in the Domesday Book and later lauded by Charles Dickens in the novel Barnaby Rudge where the Maypole Inn is said to have been based on the village's King's Head pub. Charles Dickens frequently visited Chigwell, which he described in a letter as "the greatest place in the world...Such a delicious old inn opposite the church...such beautiful forest scenery...such an out of the way rural place!".

From 1933 to 1974 it formed together with Buckhurst Hill and Loughton the Chigwell Urban District. Parish councils were re-established for the parishes of Buckhurst Hill, Chigwell, and Loughton in 1996.

Chigwell now has many large suburban houses such as those on Manor Road which featured in the popular English situation comedy Birds of a Feather. Chigwell School, a public school, was founded from a bequest by Samuel Harsnett, Archbishop of York, in 1631. Among its many famous past pupils is William Penn, who later went on to found Pennsylvania. The diarist John Aubrey recorded that it was at Chigwell School that Penn had a mystical vision, which influenced his later conversion to Quakerism. The original 17th-century schoolroom where Penn was taught still stands, and is now the school library.

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