Tolleshunt Major or Beckingham, Essex

Historical Description

Tolleshunt Major or Beckingham, a parish, with a village, in Essex, 4½ miles ENE of Maldon station on the G.E.R. Post town, Witham; money order and telegraph office, Tolleshunt D'Arcy. Acreage, 2226; population, 405. There is a parish council of five members and a chairman. A seat of the Beckinghams was erected here in the time of Henry VIII., and is now represented only by an embattled gateway and walls. The living is a vicarage in the diocese St Albans; net value, £105. The church, which stands about half a mile SE of the village, formerly belonged to the priory of Caldwell, Beds, and is a building of pudding stone, Caen stone, and rubble in the Norman and Early English styles, consisting of chancel, nave, S porch, and an embattled western tower. It was restored at a cost of £600 in 1888.

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.

Directories & Gazetteers

We have transcribed the entry for Tolleshunt Major or Beckingham from the following:

• Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Tolleshunt Major, or Beckingham (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 Tolleshunt Major or Beckingham 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