Moulsham, Essex Genealogy

England   Essex

Parish History
Moulsham St John the Evangelist is an Ecclesiastical Parish in the county of Essex, created in 1838 from Chelmsford,_Essex Ancient Parish as part of the expansion of Chelmsford town and creation of district churches.

The diocese of Chelmsford was created in 1914, prior to this Essex parishes were in the jurisdiction of the Bishops of London until 1845 when they transferred to the diocese of Rochester. The diocese of Chelmsford has 474 parishes and 600 churches and is the second largest region in the church of England outside London.

MOULSHAM, a hamlet, in the parish, union, and hundred of Chelmsford, S. division of Essex, ¾ of a mile (S. W.) from Chelmsford; containing 2906 inhabitants. A district church, dedicated to St. John, has been built, containing 540 sittings, 300 of which are free: the living is a perpetual curacy in the gift of the Rector, with a net income of £150.

From: 'Mouldsworth - Moze', A Topographical Dictionary of England (1848), pp. 353-356. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=51162&amp;amp;strquery=moulsham Date accessed: 20 February 2011.

Moulsham is a suburb of Chelmsford, Essex, England. It is located to the south of the town centre and has two distinct areas: Old Moulsham and Moulsham Lodge.

Moulsham gained its own church in 1837 when St John’s was constructed opposite Anchor Street on the south side of Moulsham Street at a cost of £2500. The familiar square tower was added in 1883.

In 1839 the Mildmay estate and adjoining land to the south became available for purchase, this enabled the rapid and significant expansion of Chelmsford. At this time a group of local enterprising (non-conformist) businessmen surreptitiously acquired land in several lots, and were thus able to form what is now New London Road, disposing of plots with strict covenants to realise a grand design ‘a handsome road of highly ornamental mansions’ as an elegant approach to Chelmsford. Whilst it followed a parallel alignment, New London Road was not a ‘by-pass’ of Moulsham Street in the modern sense of the word, rather it was constructed as an alternative route with its new residences enabling merchandisers to move ‘out of town’. Moulsham was effectively swallowed by Chelmsford during Victorian expansion of the town.

The influx of people into the area led to a school being constructed next to St John’s Church in 1840, which was later extended in 1885. Previously the British School close to the site of the former Friary was one of only two or three schools in the town. During the mid nineteenth century several pockets of industry, geared around manufacturing, were established in and around Moulsham Street. This included Marconi’s and Crompton’s – two of Chelmsford’s ‘big three’ manufacturers responsible for giving the town an international reputation.

In 1878 Col REB Crompton established the country’s first electrical engineering works at his Arc Works in Anchor Street, a site that had been in industrial use principally as an iron works since 1833. Crompton was a pioneer of electric lighting schemes, ‘Devon House’ in Anchor Street was constructed in 1890 as a power station to provide electric lighting for Chelmsford’s main streets. In 1895 Crompton’s relocated to Writtle Road after a fire. The vacant factory was occupied in 1902 by Clarkson’s, who made steam omnibuses at the site until 1917 and branched out into bus operating as ‘National’ converting to petrol buses in 1920 – the name surviving in the town and beyond until the 1990s.

In 1898, Guglielmo Marconi set up the first radio factory in the world in Hall Street in a furniture store, itself a converted Silk Mill adjacent to water-board premises. Radio equipment was manufactured and shipped around the world from an expanding operation in Hall Street until Marconi’s relocated to new premises in New Street, Chelmsford in 1912. Marconi’s retained a presence in Chelmsford until the late 1990s, employing several thousand local people in its heyday.

Other industries operating in the late nineteenth century in around Moulsham Street included rope and tentmakers (Godfreys established 1828, wound up 1985), brickworks, ironworks, furniture manufacturing and builder’s yard/offices.

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

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.

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.