Wakes Colne, Essex Genealogy

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

Parish History
Wakes Colne also known as Colne-Wakes (All Saints), is a parish in Lexden district, Essex; it is on the river Colne. It is on the Colne-Valley railway, 1 mile WNW of Chapel railway station, and 5¼ miles ESE of Halstead. The post office is under Halstead.

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

To find the names of the neighboring parishes, use England Jurisdictions 1851 Map. In this site, search for the name of the parish, click on the location "pin", click Options and click List contiguous parishes.

Records are also available at the Essex Record Office (online records available at Essex Archives Online).

Essex Online Parish Clerks (OPC)

Poor Law Unions
Lexden and Winstree Poor Law Union, Essex

Between 1681 and 1741 the overseers paid weekly allowances and supplied firewood and other relief in kind to 6-9 paupers, and gave occasional relief to others; some pauper children were apprenticed. In 1724-5 a woman was taken to hospital in London. Apart from the wheel and two spindles bought for a widow in 1717, nothing was done to set the poor on work. Rents were paid for a few paupers; others were accommodated in the town house or workhouse at Wakes Colne green, or in the parish or poor house, occasionally also called the town house, east of the church. One house, called the almshouse, was built or rebuilt in 1698; the town or workhouse was extensively repaired, in white brick, in 1749-50. The total amount spent averaged c. £60 a year, reaching a low point of £28 in 1688-9, and high points of £122 in 1715-16 and £123 in 1730-1. Expenditure was high between 1715 and 1723, perhaps because of widespread illness, and in 1721 the overseers reduced spending on clothes and other relief in kind. Expenditure on the poor was £168 in 1776, averaged £180 between 1783 and 1785, and rose in 1803 to £324, or 17s. 5d. per head of population, about average for the hundred. Between 1813 and 1836 expenditure per head of population was among the highest in the hundred, although total expenditure fell from £961 in 1813 to £638 in 1815 before rising again to £882 in 1819. It reached a high point of £1,070 or 48s. 5d. per head in 1831 and £1,015 in 1832 before falling sharply to £683 in 1834. In 1800-1 paupers still received weekly allowances, wood, clothing, and other contributions in kind, but by 1823 almost all out relief was in cash. Men worked in the gravel pits or on the roads; in 1824 and 1825 four girls were at a nearby silk mill. From 1830 the overseers paid the workhouse governor for keeping up to 26 paupers at 3s. a head, but other payments to the poor continued as before. The workhouse was used until 1837, when it was sold and the paupers transferred to the Union workhouse in Stanway. The usual parish officers, 2 churchwardens, 2 overseers of the poor, 2 surveyors of the highways, and 2 constables, were elected annually from the late 17th century or earlier. From 1734 to 1822 there was only one churchwarden. Attendance at the Easter vestry in the earlier 19th century ranged from 2 to 9; the rector, when present, took the chair.

From: 'Wakes Colne: Local government', A History of the County of Essex: Volume 10: Lexden Hundred (Part) including Dedham, Earls Colne and Wivenhoe (2001), pp. 125-126. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=15196&amp;strquery=wakes colne Date accessed: 14 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
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