England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Messing All Saints

The Parish

The parish of Messing lies in the eastern portion of central Essex roughly 6 miles northeast of the market town of Witham. Messing is sited about 2 miles southeast of the busy A12 trunk road which links Colchester with Chelmsford and onward to London. Messing is a small and compact village with most properties lying around an "N" shape of lanes whereby the church forms the focus of the easternmost leg. Within the wider parish lies the estate of Messing Park with its late 19th century country house in "gault" brick. Like most Essex parishes Messing was dominated by its arable farming, the soils being light and relatively fertile were easily worked by medieval farmers such that only a small acreage varied from those methods. Messing is drained westwards by the small Domsey Brook which soon meets the River Blackwater at Kelvedon where water turns more southwest and then south to merge with the Chelmer just prior to the formation of their joint estuary at Maldon and thus to the North Sea. Messing is sited at around 40 metres above the sea in gentle terrain where local heights just scrape above 70 metres in places near Tiptree. Covering just under 2,200 acres Messing was fairly typically sized for its county, that acreage would have supported a population of close to 750 parishioners. In Domesday times Messing was an equally rural settlement held by one Roger de Rames, its assets of just 5 ploughs, typical meadows & woodland were augmented by the presence of a mill.

The Church

All Saints' church sits at the junction of The Street and an unnamed lane headed southwards into a parkland-like landscape. The church, at its core, is a church of the early medieval period primarily the 13th and mid 14th centuries but with indications, including Roman brick, of there being a much earlier church on the site. The churches warm colouring comes from the use of its conglomerate stone in the construction with limestone facings contrasting amiably. The earliest portion of today's church is the chancel, a 13th century Early English Gothic piece showing that styling, in particular, in its northern face's blocked window. Pevsner uses the heraldry of the nave to establish a rough date for its construction indicative of completion by c1360 in an early Perpendicular style. The western tower is an early Victorian addition built between 1839 & 1840 which Pevsner bemoans as not being typically Essex-like. The work of this early Victorian period also included the addition of both north & south transepts, somewhat unusually for its stable geological location the northern transept became damaged during an earthquake and had to be demolished during the more general Victorian restoration of 1886. Parking immediately outside the churchyard is made simple by a safe triangular area fronted by the village's war memorial. As the churchyard is somewhat compact the views from the favoured southern aspect are somewhat impeded by close trees leaving all other angles available to the photographer.