Great Leighs, Essex
Historical Description
Leighs, Great or Much, a village and a parish in Essex. The village stands on the river Ter, 4½ miles SW from White Notley station on the G.E.R., and 7 NE from Chehns-ford. It has a post and telegraph office under Chelmsford; money order office, Little Waltham. Acreage of parish, 3146; population, 720. The living is a rectory in the diocese of St Albans; gross value, £690 with residence, in the gift of Lincoln College, Oxford. The church is a very ancient building, partly Norman, consisting of chancel, nave, S porch, and a round tower of stone and flint with octagonal shingled spire. It has a mutilated brass of a priest of 1414. There are also a non-sectarian chapel, two alms-houses. Chatley is a hamlet situated about 2 miles NW of the village.
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 | Leighs St. Mary | |
Hundred | Chelmsford | |
Poor Law union | Chelmsford |
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 Great Leighs from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Leighs, Great (St. Mary))
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 Great Leighs 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: