Basildon is not a town that grew from one historic centre. The New Town brought together a collection of much older settlements, plotland communities, farms and hamlets, then added large planned neighbourhoods around them. This is why modern Basildon has such strongly defined local areas.
By the early 1960s the New Town was described as comprising ten neighbourhoods: Pitsea, Laindon, Langdon Hills, Vange, Lee Chapel South, Lee Chapel North, Fryerns, Ghyllgrove, Barstable and Kingswood. They were not all created in the same way. Pitsea, Laindon, Vange and Langdon Hills had substantial histories before 1949, while Fryerns, Ghyllgrove, Barstable and Kingswood became strongly associated with the Development Corporation's post-war building programme.
The plan was not simply to build rows of houses. Residential areas needed schools, local shops, churches, public houses, open spaces, community facilities and routes connecting them to employment and the new town centre. Neighbourhood centres allowed many everyday needs to be met without travelling into central Basildon.
Laindon and Pitsea already had railway stations and established shopping areas. Vange, Lee Chapel, Langdon Hills, Nevendon and Dunton also had communities and long histories. Plotland development had spread across large parts of the designated area after agricultural land was divided and sold in plots during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
New roads and housing frequently replaced the earlier landscape. Old lanes were widened, diverted or lost; farms disappeared; and many plotland roads and property names vanished. Other historic routes and buildings survived and were absorbed into the New Town, leaving a patchwork of old and new that can still be recognised today.