Rapla

Rapla appears in the Danish Census Book of 1241 as a small village in northern Estonia. A stone church was established here in the thirteenth century and became the centre of a parish serving the surrounding countryside. During the Great Northern War the church burned down to its walls; it was restored by 1738. Rapla's manor, recorded from 1412, became a separate estate from Alu in 1705. Late eighteenth-century maps show two villages bearing the name, one by the church and another to the west.