Place:Langdon Hills, Essex, England

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source: Family History Library Catalog

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Langdon Hills is now a township located in the Basildon District of Essex, England. It is contiguous with the Basildon continuous urban area.

It is located south of Laindon railway station on the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway. It is the location of the 400-acre (1.6 km2) Langdon Hills Country Park, which is in the unitary authority of Thurrock. In 1767, Arthur Young commented on the view from Langdon Hills

"…near Horndon, on the summit of a vast hill, one of the most astonishing prospects to be beheld, breaks almost at once upon one of the dark lanes. Such a prodigious valley, everywhere painted with the finest verdure, and intersected with numberless hedges and woods, appears beneath you, that it is past description; the Thames winding thro’ it, full of ships and bounded by the hills of Kent. Nothing can exceed it…" (Source:Arthur Young, A Six Weeks' Tour through the Southern Counties of England and Wales)

North of the railway station and line, in Basildon district, is Laindon. Laindon and Langdon Hills are part of the Basildon post town.

Until its abolition in 1936, Langdon Hills was a civil parish, part of the Orsett Rural District. In 1936, it became part of the Thurrock Urban District. The area covered by the traditional parish of Langdon Hills is in the Unitary Authority of Thurrock.

In 1931 it covered an area of 1,816 acres (7.35 km2) and had a population of 2,103. 100 years earlier, in 1831, the population was 224 and the area covered was 1,850 acres (7.5 km2).

Research Tips

• The Thurrock Local History Society provides an Ordnance Survey map which illustrates the area of Essex covered by Thurrock. Unfortunately the area of the Langdon Hills above the A13 has been cut off 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