St Osyth, Essex Genealogy

England   Essex   Essex Parishes

Parish History
St Osyth is an Ancient Parish in the county of Essex. Other places in the parish include: Wigborough Wick and New Frowick.

Before being renamed to commemorate Saint Osyth, the village was called Chich (alternative spellings include Chiche and Chick). Legend has it that Saint Osyth (or Ositha) was a young lady who was involved in various fantastical events during her lifetime. Tales include:

A young Osyth drowned in a stream, but was revived by nuns from the local convent praying for her for three days. St Osyth was executed by beheading; where she fell a spring issued forth from the ground; she picked up her head and walked to the door of the nunnery where she knocked three times on the door before collapsing. To this day, Osyth's ghost walks along the priory walls carrying her head one night each year.

St Osyth was the subject of an episode of Channel 4's Time Team programme, "Lost Centuries of St Osyth", (series 12 episode 9, first broadcast in February 2005). This programme sought to uncover the early origins of the village, which was presumed to have grown up at around the same time as the Priory, in the twelfth century. Many of the investigations around the current village centre found little evidence of settlement earlier than the fourteenth century; it appeared that the early village centre lay some way off, between the Priory and the river.

The village was a focus for witch persecutions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with a total of ten local women being hanged as a result. In 1921 the skeletons of 2 women were discovered in the garden of a house in the village. One was claimed to be the witch Ursley Kempe who was the first to be prosecuted. The skeletons became a local tourist attraction.

St Osyth is a village and civil parish in the Tendring District for local government purposes in northeast Essex. It is about 5 miles (8.0 km) west of Clacton-on-Sea, and about 12 miles (19.3 km) southeast of Colchester. It is located on the B1027 road and is named after Osyth, a saint and Anglian princess. The Essex dialect pronunciation is 'Toosey', which is still in use locally for the name of the village.

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

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
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.'