BENFLEET (NORTH)
The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales...., by John Marius Wilson. circa 1866
BENFLEET (NORTH), a parish in Billericay district, Essex; 2 and ½ miles NE of Pitsea r. station, and 3 W by S of Rayleigh. It has a post-office under Chelmsford. Acres, 2,418. Real propery, £3,225. Pop., 285. Houses, 56. The property is divided among a few. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Rochester. Value, £700. Patron, the Rev. C.R. Rowlatt. The church is good.
Transcribed by Noel Clark
KELLY'S DIRECTORY OF ESSEX 1933
NORTH BENFLEET is a parish, 3 miles north-east from the Pitsea station on the London, Midland and Scottish railway and 3 south from Wicklord Junction on the Sonthend branch of the London and North Eastern railway, 31 from London, 10 north-west from Southend and 8 south-east from Billericay, in the South Eastern division of the county, Barstable hundred, Brentwood petty sessional division, Southend county court district, Billericay rural district, and in the rural deanery of Wickford, archdeaconry of South end and Chelmsford diocese. The parish is supplied with water from the works of the Southend Water Co. The church of All Saints is a small and ancient fabric of stone and flint in the Early English style, consisting of chancel, nave, north porch and a modern western tower of brick, containing 2 bells: the chancel was rebuilt and the church reseated in the year 1871, and it now affords 100 sittings. The register of baptisms and burials dates from 1647; marriages, 1648 The living is a rectory, net yearly value £563, with 24 acres of glebe and residence, in the gift of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and held since 1921 by the Rev. Wolstan Dixie Churchill B.A. of that college. The church school was built in 1870 at the cost of Canon Chalker, rector, and the Master and Fellows of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Here is a Congregational mission chapel. The principal landowners are Allen Ansell esq. and Robert Wilson esq. The soil is heavy, subsoil, a strong loam. The greater part of the land has now been laid down to pasture and the farms have been converted into dairy and stock farms. The area is 1,601 acres; the population in 1931 was 560.
Post & Tel. Call Office. Letters delivered from Wick ford, Essex. Pitsea is the nearest M. O. & T. office