Little Horkesley, Essex Genealogy

England   Essex   Essex Parishes



Parish History
Little Horkesley or Horkesley, Little (St. Peter and St. Paul), is a parish, in the union of Lexden and Winstree, Colchester division of the hundred of Lexden, N. division of Essex, it is 1½ mile S W by S from Nayland.

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

Poor Law Unions
Lexden and Winstree Poor Law Union, Essex

Courts were being held for Little Horkesley Hall in 1266, and in 1273-4 the lord held a court leet with the assizes of bread and of ale. In 1631-2 the lord still held courts leet and baron. In the 1630s one two constables were normally elected, and two surveyors in 1638. The business of the courts was limited to the transfer of holdings and the punishment and correction of minor misdefmeanours and nuisances, such as breaking the lord's pound and hedgebreaking. ThomasBourdillon (d. 1888) enfranchised many copyholds, but manorial rights were not fully extinguished until 1936. ) About 1525 the priory manor also held a court baron, but there is no later record of it. From 1664 parish officers included two churchwardens, two constables, two overseers of the poor, and two surveyors of highways. In 1692-3 Edward Husbands of Little Horkesley Hall was both churchwarden and surveyor of highways. In 1654 a poor rate raised £6 5s. and in 1776 another £60 9s. 8d. Expenditure had increased to £365 12s. 6d. in 1801, but only averaged c. £245 between 1801 and 1815 with a peak of £348 19s. 10d. in 1813. It averaged c. £410 between 1827 and 1836, and by the latter year the cost per head of population of 35s. 11d. was the highest in the Colchester division of Lexden hundred. In 1717 Edward Husbands rented a house to the parish for the use of the poor, and the arrangement still operated in 1782. The house was probably on the site of Workhouse Cottages on Workhouse Road. An average of nine people received occasional relief in that workhouse between 1813 and 1815. The surviving build- ing includes a pair of two-roomed cottages built c. 1800 around a single central stack. A third cottage was added to the rear early in the 19th century. The building still comprised three cottages in 1914, but later in the 20th century it was made into a single dwelling.

From: 'Little Horkesley: Local government', A History of the County of Essex: Volume 10: Lexden Hundred (Part) including Dedham, Earls Colne and Wivenhoe (2001), pp. 238-239. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=15260&amp;amp;strquery=little horkesley Date accessed: 13 February 2011.

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
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 * England Jurisdictions 1851
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