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

The Parish

The parish of Vange lies in southern Essex roughly 2 miles south of the new town if Basildon. Vange sits on and mostly north of the A13 road which links London with Southend on Sea. Vange is a much changed place, early maps show a loosely distributed area with no real village, the church at the southwestern end and a cluster around the present centre. Vange has grown as Basildon New Town has spread its modern estate southwards from its centre such that today Vange is merely part of this urban area albeit one with a wilder fringe. South of the 13 lies a wilder landscape of creek and marshland that have Vange a mixed farming economy albeit weighted 2:1 in favour of arable according to early gazetteers. Modern developments abound, the railway line connecting Tilbury with the main London to Southend lines passes through whilst the A13 is now a modern fast dual-carriageway highway. Vange has its own creek connecting the village with the outer Thames Estuary that drains the parish. Vange is sited between sea level at the creek and 25 metres above it just north of the A13, few spots for miles exceed 30 metres in this gentle terrain. Vange parish was typically sized for the area covering just under 1,500 acres and supporting a population of around 150 parishioners, much higher than that today. In Domesday times Vange was held by Bishop Odo of Bayeux and was a modest rural manor offering 6 ploughs, pastures & woodland, a mill and a fishery provided a little extra income.

The Church

All Saints' church sits south of the London Road accessed by a short dead-end lane and sitting cheek-by-jowl alongside the busy A13, the access is approximately a quarter mile east of the roundabout that London Road has with the A276. Pevsner finds enough early fabric to place the origins into the 12th century, a Norman Romanesque styled window in the nave southern wall and the chancel arch remain from this early period. The main body of the church was probably contemporary but has been much modified over the more recent period.The medieval period of the Perpendicular saw the chancel extended in the 15th century but the major work at opposite ends of the church came in the 18th & 19th centuries. The chancel's eastern wall was rebuild in the 18th century whilst the western wall of the nave received similar attention in the late Georgian era of 1836 when a general restoration took place. Today the church is in the management care of the Churches Conservation Trust who also did work in 2002-2005 before taking on the building. There is a substantial car park for visitors allowing a leisurely visit, the churchyard has few obstacles to concern the photographer.