Place:Wivenhoe, Essex, England

Watchers
NameWivenhoe
Alt namesWiunhousource: Domesday Book (ed. 1985) p 106
Wivenhoe Crosssource: settlement in parish
TypeParish, Urban district
Coordinates51.867°N 0.967°E
Located inEssex, England
See alsoLexden and Winstree Rural, Essex, Englandrural district in which it was located 1894-1974
Colchester (district), Essex, Englanddistrict municipality covering the area since 1974
source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
source: Family History Library Catalog
the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Wivenhoe is a town and civil parish in northeastern Essex, England, approximately 3 miles (4.8 km) southeast of Colchester. Wivenhoe is now part of the Borough or District of Colchester, but until the formation of the borough in 1974, Wivenhoe was an urban district. At the 2001 census, the town had a population of over 7,221.

Historically Wivenhoe village, on the banks of the River Colne, and Wivenhoe Cross, on the higher ground to the north, were two separate settlements but with considerable development in the 19th century the two have merged.

The emphasis of the town's history was on fishing, ship building, and smuggling.

Wivenhoe developed as a port and, until the late 19th century, was effectively a port for Colchester, as large ships were unable to navigate any further up the River Colne. The river has an estuary south of Wivenhoe, but this narrows very quickly through the town. Wivenhoe became an important port for trade for Colchester and developed shipbuilding, with two prosperous shipyards, commerce and fishing industries. The period of greatest prosperity for the town came with the arrival of the railway in 1863. The rail connection turned it into a trading hub with the continent of Europe. Improvements of other ports have led to the closing of Wivenhoe port since the 1980s.

Research Tips

  • 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
  • A map illustrating Wivenhoe's relationship to its surrounding parishes may be found on the page describing Lexden and Winstree Rural District of which it was part between 1894 and 1974. It is marked as #39 on the map.
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Wivenhoe. 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.