Aldham, Essex Genealogy

Guide to Aldham, Essex ancestry, family history, and genealogy. Parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
Aldham (St Margaret and St Catherine), is a parish in Lexden district, Essex; it is near River Colne, 2 miles N of Marks Tey railway station, and 5 miles ENE of Coggeshall.

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
Aldham parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

Non-Conformist Churches

 * Independent/Congregational

Poor Law Unions

 * Lexden and Winstree Poor Law Union, Essex

Easter vestries, recorded from 1754, were normally chaired by the rector or his curate and attended by 7-10 parishioners, attendance declining during the 18th century. About 6 other meetings a year were held, usually in the church vestry. In the periods 1757-78, 1781-8, and 1828 only 1 churchwarden was elected or re-elected. In 1754 the churchwardens were empowered to act as additional overseers, and in 1828 the sole churchwarden was also overseer. Two overseers, 2 constables, and 2 surveyors were appointed regularly, the overseers serving for 6 months each. In 1757 a widow served as overseer. Constables were appointed until 1872.

In 1584 Aldham had many impotent poor, and in 1589 Petty Sessions met at Fordham ford, near the house of one of the chief constables, to deal with local unemployment. There was a workhouse by 1757, apparently at Westons on Gallows Green. Paupers there span wool in the 1780s. The house was enlarged in 1801 and was leased by the overseers until c.1835. Two other houses were used as pauper housing in 1783.

In 1753 three adults and three children, and by 1782 twelve people, received regular out-relief. By 1800 weekly payments were made to 33 families with young children, and between 1817 and 1819 a flour allowance was given to families with 4 or more children. Several poor families received bread in 1836. Between 1819 and 1822 payments were made to unemployed men and those on low wages, and in 1823 men were employed in the gravel pit. In 1833 the vestry resolved to levy a labour rate, based on a wage of 9s. a week, to help provide employment. In 1830 one man was helped to emigrate to New York.

Expenditure on poor relief rose from c.£120 in 1776 to an average of c.£211 between 1783 and 1785 and to £338 in 1803. By 1813 it had reached £792 or £2 1s. per head of population, one of the highest rates in the hundred. It dropped to £18s. a head in 1814 and remained well below that thereafter, except in 1820 and 1831. In most years up to 1836 expenditure, at 18s.-25s. a head, remained about average for the hundred.

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

Websites
Essex Ancestors - offers images of genealogical records for the county of Essex

Aldham on GENUKI