Mountnessing, Essex
Historical Description
Mountnessing, a village and an ancient parish in Essex. The village stands on a branch of the river Wid, 2 miles S by W of Ingatestone station on the G.E.R.. and 3½ NE of Brentwood. The parish has a post and money order office under Brentwood; telegraph office, Hutton. Acreage, 4206; population, 912. Thoby Priory was founded in 1141 for Augustinian canons by Michael Capra Roisi, had at the dissolution an income estimated at £75, and has left some remains. A mansion, bearing the name of Thoby Priory, is a seat of the Arkwright family. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of St Albans; net value, £124 with residence. Patron, the Bishop of St Albans. The church, which was repaired and restored in 1890, is an ancient building of brick in the Early English style, having a curious bell-cot built up from the ground with a massive framework of oak timber. There is a small iron church, which was erected in 1873 as a chapel of ease to the parish church, and also a Congregational chapel.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
Ancient County | Essex | |
Ecclesiastical parish | Mountnessing St. Giles | |
Hundred | Chelmsford | |
Poor Law union | Billericay |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Mountnessing from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Mountnessing (St. Giles))
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Essex is available to browse.
The Essex pages from the Return of Owners of Land in 1873 is online.
Maps
Online maps of Mountnessing are available from a number of sites:
- Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- Google Streetview.
- National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
- OpenStreetMap.
- old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
- Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)
Newspapers and Periodicals
The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following newspapers covering Essex online: