South Ockendon, Essex

Historical Description

Ockendon, South, a village and a parish in Essex. The village stands 4½ miles NNW of Grays station on the London, Tilbury, and Southend railway, and 6½ SW of Romford, and has a post, money order, and telegraph office under Romford. The parish is sometimes called Ockendon Rokely or Wokendon. Acreage, 2935; population of the civil parish, 1071; of the ecclesiastical, 1076. The manor and most of the land belong to the Benyon family. There are several ancient mounds. The living is a rectory in the diocese of St Albans; gross value, £637 with residence. The church is an ancient building of flint, rubble, and stone, in the Early Pointed style of the 12th and 13th centuries; was variously restored, enlarged, and rebuilt in 1866; has a richly carved Norman doorway and a round tower-the latter raised to an additional height of 18 feet in 1866; includes a chapel restored in 1863, and a new chancel built in 1866, and contains an elegant octangular Perpendicular font, a canopied brass of Sir J. Bruyn of 1480, and two other brasses. There are Congregational and Wesleyan chapels, and a village reading-room.

Administration

The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.

Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.

Civil Registration

For general information about Civil Registration (births, marriages and deaths) see the Civil Registration page.

Directories & Gazetteers

We have transcribed the entry for South Ockendon from the following:

• Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Ockendon, South (St. Nicholas))

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 South Ockendon 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:

• Chelmsford Chronicle
• Essex Newsman
• Essex Standard