Witham with Chipping Hill, Essex
Historical Description
Witham-with-Chipping Hill, an ancient town and a parish in Essex, on the Roman road from London to Colchester, near the influx of the Podsbrook or Guith to the river Blackwater, 6 miles N from Maldon, 8 SE from Braintree, and 38 from London, with a station on the G.E.R., and a head post office. The town was built and fortified by Edward the Elder, passed to Eustace of Boulogne, the Knights Templars, and the Knights of St John, and was a seat of assizes in 1568. It consists chiefly of one long street, is a seat of petty sessions, and has two banks, a savings bank, a literary institution and library, a police station, and fairs on the Friday and Saturday in Whitsun week and on 4 June at Chipping Hill. It formerly had a weekly market, but this has become obsolete. The parish comprises 3713 acres; population, 3444. The remains of a circular camp with a double vallum, possibly of ancient British origin, is on Chipping Hill. There are four manors. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of St Albans; gross value, £203, in the gift of the Bishop of St Albans. The church is a spacious lofty building in the Early Decorated style, dating in part from the 12th century, and consisting of chancel, nave, aisles, S porch, and an embattled western tower. It has some good stained windows, and some ancient and interesting tombs and monuments. The church of All Saints, a chapel of ease to the parish church, was erected in 1842, and is a building of cut flint and white brick in the Early English style. There is a Roman Catholic church, a building of blue Kentish rag in the Early English style, and also Baptist, Congregational, and Wesleyan Methodist chapels. The Peculiar People have also a meeting-place. There are three blocks of almshouses with a total endowment of about £180 a year.
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 | Witham St. Nicholas | |
Hundred | Witham | |
Poor Law union | Witham |
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 Witham with Chipping Hill from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Witham (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 Witham with Chipping Hill 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: