Thorpe le Soken, Essex Genealogy

England   Essex   Essex Parishes



Parish History
Thorpe-le-Soken St Michael is an Ancient Parish in Essex.

Thorpe-le-Soken's history can be traced back to Saxon times.

Sir William Gull (1816 – 1890), Royal physician, and suggested as a suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders, is buried in St Michael's churchyard.

Thorpe-le-Soken is a village and civil parish which for local government purposes is part of Tendring district in Essex, located southwest of Walton-on-the-Naze, Frinton-on-Sea and northwest of Clacton-on-Sea.

Here is an 1848 historical perspective for this parish:

THORPE-LE-SOKEN (St. Mary), a parish, in the union and hundred of Tendring, N. division of Essex, 12 miles (E. S. E.) from Colchester; containing 1365 inhabitants. The three parishes of Thorpe, Kirby, and Walton, form a manor termed " the liberty of the Soken," having within its limits two or three reputed manors of smaller extent. The manor was given to the church of St. Paul, London, by King Athelstan, before 941. It still belonged to the canons at the time of the Norman survey, and the dean and chapter continued to hold it, with the three advowsons as their peculiars, until deprived of the jurisdiction by Henry VIII. Mary, by letters-patent dated March 2nd, 1554, placed the whole under the visitation of the Bishop of London. Edward VI. granted the manors and advowsons, with all their privileges, to Sir Thomas D'Arcy, vice-chamberlain of his household, and they have since had various owners. The lord of the manor appoints a commissary, who has a court, proves wills, and grants marriagelicences, &c.; he also chooses a coroner and other officers for the liberty. The parish comprises by admeasurement 3203 acres, of which 2574 are arable, 195 pasture, 32 woodland, and 402 salt-marsh and waste; the soil is in general fertile. A creek, or arm of the sea, runs up to Landermere, a small hamlet in the parish, where is a convenient wharf, at which vessels take in corn for the London market, and discharge their cargoes of coal, manure, &c. A customary market is held every Wednesday evening; and there are fairs on the Monday before Whitsuntide and September 29th. The petty-sessions for the division take place here alternately with Mistley. The living is a discharged vicarage, consolidated with the vicarages of Kirby and Walton, and valued in the king's books at £16; impropriator, J. Martin Leake, Esq., of Thorpe Hall. The church, an ancient structure, was entirely repewed in 1827: the chancel contains several monuments to the Leakes, and one to a member of the Wharton family; in the vestry is a figure of a warrior, with a lion at his feet. The Baptists have a place of worship. A number of French refugees settled and had a chapel here, but there are no remains of the building.

From: Samuel A. Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England (1848), pp. 343-346. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=51339 Date accessed: 13 April 2011.

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

Essex Online Parish Clerks(OPC)

Census records
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
Tendring 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.