In 1870-72, John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Manningtree like this:
MANNINGTREE, a small town, a parish, and a subdistrict in Tendring district, Essex. The town stands on the navigable river Stour, at the boundary with Suffolk, adjacent to the junction of the two lines of the Great Eastern railway toward Ipswich and Harwich, 8¾ miles NE of Colchester; extends partly into the parishes of Mistley and Lawford; was known at Domesday as Sciddinchon; is irregularly built, yet contains some good houses; carries on a considerable trade in brewing, Malting, and the sale of corn; had formerly a considerable shipping trade, which declined in consequence of greater facility of transit afforded by railway; is still a considerable centre for country traffic; and has a head post office,‡ two railway stations with telegraph, two banking offices, two chief inns, a weekly market on Thursday, a fair on Whit-Thursday, a corn-exchange, a church, Independent and Wesleyan chapels, a mechanics' literary and scientific institution, and a national school. ...
The corn-exchange was built in 1865; is of white brick, with stone dressings; has a front with tetrastyle Corinthian portico, and two circular-headed windows; contains thirty stands; and is used also for public meetings, lectures, and concerts. A new cattle-market, with sheds and pens, is in a back lane, near the corn-exchange. The church was built in 1616, and enlarged in 1839; and contains a monu ment to Thomas Osmond, who suffered Martyrdom in the town in 1515. The mechanics' institution was built in 1849, is in the Tudor style, and has a library of about 1,000 volumes. Shakespeare speaks of a "roasted Manningtree ox with a pudding in its pouch;'' and the author of Hudibras alludes to a witch-finder, M. Hopkins, who lived in Manningtree. The parish comprises 30 acres of land and 85 of water. Real property, £3,765. Pop. in 1851,1,176; in 1861,881. Houses, 221. The manor belonged to Adeliza, the halfsister of William the Conqueror; was afterwards given to Canon-Leigh nunnery; passed to the Rainsworths; and belongs now to T. G. Kensit, Esq. The living is a p. curacy, annexed to the rectory of Mistley, in the diocese of Rochester.—The sub-district contains also six other parishes. Acres, 17,342. Pop., 5,223. Houses, 1,205.
Manningtree through time
Manningtree is now part of Tendring district. Click here for graphs and data of how Tendring has changed over two centuries. For statistics about Manningtree itself, go to Units and Statistics.
GB Historical GIS / University of Portsmouth, History of Manningtree, in Tendring and Essex | Map and description, A Vision of Britain through Time.
URL: https://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/place/6819
Date accessed: 25th April 2024
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