Chipping Ongar, Essex
Historical Description
Ongar or Chipping Ongar, an ancient town and a parish in Essex. The town stands on the Cripsey Brook, a tributary of the river Roding, at the terminus of a branch of the G.E.R., 23 miles from London, and 6 E by N of Epping. It was known at Domesday as Aungre; took afterwards the name of Chipping Ongar to designate it as the seat of a market, and to distinguish it from High Ongar; belonged at Domesday to Earl Eustace; passed in the time of Henry II. to Richard de Lucy; occupies the site of an ancient entrenchment; is proved, by the finding of many Roman relics in it, to have been the place of a Roman settlement; and had a castle at some early period, rebuilt and moated by Richard de Lucy, which is now represented by some remains. The town is a seat of petty sessions; consists chiefly of one street, situated on a rising bank, and commanding a good view; and has a post, money order, and telegraph office (S.O.), a bank, a three-arched bridge over the Cripsey, an iron bridge erected in 1869 over the washway at Shelley, a town-hall, a police station, a church, a Roman Catholic church, a Congregational chapel, an endowed trust school, a lecture-hall erected in 1870, a volunteer drill hall erected in 1873, and a building used for public meetings, reading and coffee rooms, &c., erected as a memorial to the late Captain Budworth, and known as the Budworth Hall. The workhouse is in Stanford Rivers, and is a plain building of red brick, with capacity for about 170 inmates. The parish comprises 511 acres; population, 813. There is a parish council consisting of seven members. The church, erected in the 12th century, succeeded a very ancient chapel, and is in the Anglo-Norman or Transition style. It has many Roman bricks built into its walls, has loophole windows, and contains a monument to Lady Jane Cromwell, daughter of Oliver Cromwell, who was buried here. The living is a rectory iu the diocese of St Albans; net value, £107 with residence. The Congregational chapel contains memorials to the Rev. Isaac Taylor, a former minister and writer for the young, and his daughter, Jane Taylor, the celebrated authoress.
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 | Ongar St. Martin | |
Hundred | Ongar | |
Poor Law union | Ongar |
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 Chipping Ongar from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Ongar, or Chipping-Ongar (St. Martin))
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 Chipping Ongar 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: