Place:Hazeleigh, Essex, England

Watchers
NameHazeleigh
Alt namesHalesheiasource: Domesday Book (1985) p 102
Halesleiasource: Domesday Book (1985) p 102
TypeParish
Coordinates51.7°N 0.633°E
Located inEssex, England
See alsoDengie Hundred, Essex, Englandancient hundred in which it was located
Maldon Rural, Essex, Englandrural district in which it was located 1894-1974
Maldon District, Essex, Englanddistrict municipality of which it has been part since 1974
source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
source: Family History Library Catalog


the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Hazeleigh is a village and civil parish on the Dengie peninsula in the English county of Essex. It lies 2.6 miles south-west of Maldon.

The following description from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72 is provided by the website A Vision of Britain Through Time (University of Portsmouth Department of Geography).

HAZELEIGH, a parish in Maldon [registration] district, Essex; 2½ miles SW of Maldon [railway] station. Post-town: Maldon. Acres: 1,630. Real property: £1,397. Population: 106. Houses: 30. The manor-house, called the Hall, is now a farm-house. A stone coffin, about 6¾ feet long, containing a female skeleton, was dug up in a field here in 1838. The parish is a meet for the Essex Union hounds. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Rochester. Value: £258. Patrons: H. S. Blake and B. Kerr, Esqs. The church is a primitive structure, chiefly of timber.

Wikipedia reports that the timber church was located in an isolated part of the village, next to the Old Hall, but by 1900 had fallen into disuse. Due to its size and lack of windows it was known locally as "the meanest church in England". It was pulled down in about 1922, although the last service had been held several years earlier, in 1906. It was replaced by an iron church in another part of the parish, but the ecclesiastical parish of Hazeleigh is now incorporated into that of Woodham Mortimer.

Research tips

Unfortunately there is no Victoria County History volume (see below) for Dengie Hundred.
  • Essex Family History is a website which concentrates on the Dengie Hundred with lists of people found in various parishes.
  • A map illustrating Hazeleigh's relationship to its surrounding parishes may be found on the page describing Maldon Rural District of which it was part between 1894 and 1974. It is marked as #11 on the map.
  • 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
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Hazeleigh. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.