England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Great Wakering St Nicholas

The Parish

The parish of Great Wakering lies in the extreme southeast of Essex forming a lengthy stretch of the county's convoluted coastline. Great Wakering is located roughly 4 miles northeast of the coastal resort and town of Southend on Sea and stands at the eastern end of the B1017 road which connects it with Southend. Great Wakering has grown a little over the years but it is still essentially a village running westwards from a T-junction at the parish church by today the village has probably doubled in length from earlier times and grown a link joining it contiguously with its smaller neighbour Little Wakering. Great Wakering sits surrounded by the characteristic marshlands of the Essex coastline, these were reclaimed in early times with tall sea banks creating coastal grazing marsh (locally known as "innings"), the higher areas of the parish would have been arable. In addition to farming the parish would have exploited the fish and, in particular, shell-fisheries of the area, Essex was noted for its oysters and its wildfowl. The rivers of the area were the highways of the time and enabled a small inland port to develop. Local industries included brick making & cloth & glove manufacture. Sundry man-made channels take the parish's water into the surrounding creeks and thus to the North Sea. Great Wakering is sited at just 10 metres at its highest, western, edge with most of the parish being below that height and parts are below sea level in generally flat terrain. Great Wakering parish was a mixture of both land & water, the acreage included the islands of Rusley & Great Potton which took the acreage to over 5,400 acres of which only 2,800 was usable land area, that acreage would have supported a population of close to 850 parishioners. Domesday Great Wakering was a more modest manor held by a Saxon survivor, one Swein, it offered just 8 ploughs together with some meadows & woodland.

The Church

Great Wakering has the one almost straight High Street which terminated at a roundabout at its eastern end where to the east sits St Nicholas' church. St Nicholas has fabric remaining from the earliest times when it was created in the early Norman period c1100 as a simple aisleless nave & chancel in the Norman Romanesque style, much of the 12th century still remains in the fabric of the nave. Pevsner identifies that the western tower's basal stages are slightly later than those of the nave and estimates of c1130 are mooted by other sources. The tower took most of the remainder of that century to complete with a c1200 estimated completion. Whilst the chancel was 12th century in the 13th century some windows were replaced with Early English Gothic styled lancets. The church's stand-out feature is its 2-storey western porch added in the 15th century in a Perpendicular style, it is believed to have had a priests' chamber above. A further southern porch was a late Perpendicular addition in the 16th century. At least3 phases of Victorian and later work are recorded, that of 1843 added the northern chapel in contrasting brick whilst throughout the last decade of the 19th and into the 20th century a series of small restorations took place. Common Road to the north of the site has a few on-street parking spaces allowing a relaxed visit, the entrance stands directly at the roundabout where wooden gates lead into a churchyard which has no significant issues for the photographer.