Sible Hedingham, Essex Genealogy

England   Essex   Essex Parishes



Parish History
Sible Hedingham St Peter is an Ancient Parish in Essex.

One of the earliest mentions of this place is in the Domesday Book where it is mentioned together with Hedingham Castle and listed amongst the lands given to Roger Bigod by the king. The land included woodland for 70 pigs that was in total valued at £4.

The diocese of Chelmsford was created in 1914, prior to this Essex parishes were in the jurisdiction of the Bishops of London until 1845 when they transferred to the diocese of Rochester. The diocese of Chelmsford has 474 parishes and 600 churches and is the second largest region in the church of England outside London.

HEDINGHAM, SIBLE (St. Mary), a parish, in the union of Halstead, hundred of Hinckford, N. division of Essex, ¾ of a mile (S. W.) from Castle-Hedingham; containing 2322 inhabitants. The soil is generally fertile, consisting partly of light loam on a gravelly bottom, and in other places of deep and rich loam producing abundant crops, among which are considerable quantities of the best Essex hops. The village is beautifully situated near the river Colne, and contains several good houses. The living is a rectory, valued in the king's books at £22, and in the gift of Trustees: the incumbent's tithes have been commuted for £1500, and a rent-charge of £241 is paid to certain impropriators; the glebe contains 37 acres. The church is a spacious and handsome structure in the early English style, with a square embattled tower, and contains the mutilated remains of a splendid monument to Sir John Hawkwood, the Florentine chieftain, who was born here, with other memorials referring to his name and family. Here is a place of worship for Baptists.

From: Samuel A. Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England (1848), pp. 462-466. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=51021&amp;amp;strquery=castle hedingham Date accessed: 16 February 2011. The church dedication is in fact St Peter Essex Record Office reference D/P 93/1/

Sible Hedingham is a village and civil parish in the Colne Valley in Braintree District of Essex County Council.

Dummy, the Witch of Sible Hedingham (c. 1788 – September 4, 1863) was the pseudonym of an unidentified elderly man who was one of the last people to be charged with witchcraft in England in the 19th century.

A longtime resident of Sible Hedingham, Essex, a small farming village in the English countryside, he was a deaf-mute who earned a living as a local fortune teller. In September 1863, Dummy was accused by a local girl of bewitching her house in Ridgewell and dragged from The Swan tavern by a drunken mob. Thrown into a nearby brook as an "ordeal by water", he was also severely beaten with sticks before eventually taken to a workhouse in Halstead where he died of pneumonia. Following an investigation by authorities, Emma Smith and Samuel Stammers were charged with his death and tried at Chelmsford Assizes where they were sentenced to six months imprisonment on March 8, 1864.

Civil Registration
Birth, marriages and deaths were kept by the government, from July 1837 to the present day. The civil registration article tells more about these records. There are several Internet sites with name lists or indexes. A popular site is FreeBMD.

Church records
Contributor: Include here information for parish registers, Bishop’s Transcripts, non conformist and other types of church records, such as parish chest records. Add the contact information for the office holding the original records. Add links to the Family History Library Catalog showing the film numbers in their collection

Online images are available Seax - Essex Archives Online From the Essex Record Office St Peter See also Sible Hedingham Baptist Church

Census records
Contributor: Include an overview if there is any unique information, such as the census for X year was destroyed. Add a link to online sites for indexes and/or images. Also add a link to the Family History Library Catalog showing the film numbers in their collection.

Index for the Census may be searched at FamilySearch Historical Records

http://www.1881pubs.com/ for details of public houses in the 1881 census

Poor Law Unions
Halstead Poor Law Union, Essex

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Essex Probate Records to find the name of the court having primary jurisdiction. Scroll down in the article to the section Court Jurisdictions by Parish.

Maps and Gazetteers
Maps are a visual look at the locations in England. Gazetteers contain brief summaries about a place.


 * England Jurisdictions 1851
 * Vision of Britain

Web sites
Contributor: Add any relevant sites that aren’t mentioned above.