Place:Great Warley, Essex, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia Great Warley was originally in the Chafford Hundred and became part of the Romford Rural District from 1894 until 1934 when the rural district was abolished and the civil parishes transferred to neighbouring urban districts. At this point the northern third of Great Warley was transferred to the parish of Brentwood and the remainder was transferred to Hornchurch Urban District. In 1965 this remaining part of the original parish of Great Warley became part of the London Borough of Havering in Greater London. Wikipedia maintains that all of Great Warley was transferred to Brentwood, some in 1934 and some in 1965. This is refuted by GENUKI. Wikipedia tends to discuss villages rather than parishes and the village of Great Warley is outside the M25 motorway and may well be part of the area that went to Brentwood.

A nineteenth century description

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Great Warley from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:

"WARLEY (Great), a parish in Romford [registration] district, Essex; 3 miles S of Brentwood [railway] station. It includes the hamlet of Warley-Street, and has a post-office under Brentwood. Acres: 2,793. Real property: £5,442. Population in 1851: 952; in 1861: 1,220. Houses: 248. The property is much subdivided. [Warley] House, [Warley] Place, Prospect Lodge, and the Elms are chief residences. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Rochester. Value: £520. Patron: St. John's College, Cambridge. The church is ancient but good.

"A chapelry, called Christchurch Great Warley, was formed in 1855, out of Great Warley, Shenfield and South Weald parishes; and has its church upwards of 2 miles from the churches of the respective parishes. Population in 1861: 1,734. Houses: 261. The living is a [perpetual] curacy, of the value of £135, in the patronage of Trustees. There is a national school."

Research Tips

• Great Warley was in the Romford Registration District from the start of civil registration in 1837 until the parish was split in 1934. The northern third was then in Brentwood Registration District. The remaining part of the parish remained in Romford registration district until 1974 when it was transferred to the Borough of Havering registration district along with the rest of Romford.
• Essex Record Office handles Essex archives within the county. The address is Wharf Road, Chelmsford, Essex CM2 6YT.
• The Essex Society for Family History covers topics of genealogical interest throughout the present County of Essex (i.e. excluding the western area now in Greater London). Subscription necessary.
• GENUKI provides a list of towns and parishes leading to pages for individual parishes with useful local information for genealogists and family historians.
• Wikimedia Commons has a set of maps of the old hundreds of Essex. These do not show the individual parishes within the hundreds.
• For very detailed investigation Wikimedia Commons also has a series of 176 part maps of the Ordnance Survey 1st series 1:10560, Map of Essex
• FamilySearch lists its collections of church records and vital records along with those provided by other organizations, both commercial and voluntary.
• The commercial website FindMyPast also has a collection of wills and newspaper transcriptions, as well as the "1939 Register" (an equivalent to the census gathered at the beginning of World War 2).
• A Vision of Britain through Time is a website produced by the Department of Geography of the University of Portsmouth. It outlines all parishes as they were in the 19th century.
• British History Online has transcribed eight volumes of the Victoria County History project for Essex. Seven of these cover the history of parts of the county in great detail, although the project is incomplete for Essex as a whole. Ownership of land through the centuries can often be traced here. The volumes of note are as follows:

Volume 4, Ongar Hundred, including Chipping and High Ongar, Chigwell, Stondon Massey and Theydon Bois (26 parishes in all).

Volume 5, Becontree Hundred outside Greater London. A thematic account of the growth of metropolitan Essex since 1850. Also contains topographical accounts of Barking, Ilford, Dagenham and other areas of Essex now within Greater London.

Volume 6, parishes of Becontree Hundred now within the London boroughs of Newham, Waltham Forest and Redbridge. These include West and East Ham, Walthamstow and Wanstead.

Volume 7, Covers the ancient parishes, formerly within the Liberty of Havering-atte-Bower and now within the London borough of Havering, and those in Chafford hundred in western Essex now bordering London. It includes accounts of Hornchurch, Romford, Havering.

Volume 8, accounts of the parishes of Chafford and Harlow Hundreds, including Brentwood, Harlow and Thurrock.

Volume 9, the Borough of Colchester, describes the life of the oldest and for long the largest town in Essex from the Iron Age to 1990.

Volume 10, Lexden Hundred (part), includes Dedham, Earls Colne and Wivenhoe and other parishes to the north and west of Colchester.

• As of June 2019 Ancestry (Worldwide subscription required) includes Essex, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812, these early records are from parish registers of baptisms and burials during the years 1538–1812, and marriages during the years 1538-1754. These are in addition to their previous holdings:

• Essex, England, Church of England Births and Baptisms, 1813-1918: 3,937,941 records
• Essex, England, Church of England Marriages, 1754-1935: 1,968,439 records
• Essex, England, Church of England Deaths and Burials, 1813-1994: 730,118 records