Ardleigh, Essex
Historical Description
Ardleigh, a village and a parish in Essex. The parish is 5 miles NE from Colchester, and has a station on the main line of the Great Eastern railway, and a post, money order, and telegraph office under Colchester. Acreage, 5062; population of the civil parish, 1638; of the ecclesiastical, 1322. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of St Albans; value, £215, in the gift of the Lord Chancellor. The church has been restored at a cost of about £6000. There is a Wesleyan and a Primitive Methodist chapel. The soil is gravel, and the air exceptionally bracing.
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 | Ardleigh St. Mary | |
Hundred | Tendring | |
Poor Law union | Tendring |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Churches
Church of England
St Mary the Virgin (parish church)
The church of St. Mary the Virgin, a fine structure of flint and freestone, consists of chancel, nave, aisles, south porch and a fine embattled western tower containing a clock and 8 bells; the 8th bell, cast about 1420, is inscribed "Sum Rosa Pulsata Mundi Maria Vocata:" over the porch is this inscription: "Orate: p' animabus Johis Hùte: at ye Wode et Alicia: uxoris ejus, Johis Hùte: Willi: Hùte:" there is a memorial window to the Rev. Frederick Joseph Ball M.A. vicar 1897-1902: an organ was erected in 1905 at a cost of £465: in 1883 the church was rebuilt and the tower and south porch restored, at a cost, including fittings and decoration, of £4,600, and in 1892 the bells were rehung and 2 new bells added: there are 330 sittings.
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 Ardleigh from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Ardleigh (St. Mary))
- Kelly's Directory of Essex, Hertfordshire, and Middlesex, 1914
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 Ardleigh 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: