Southminster, or
South Church is about 10 miles from Maldon, is supposed to have been so
called on account of the bearing of that church with respect to those
of Tillingham and Dengie.
The houses here form two streets.
Before and
after the conquest this was the Bishop of London's land and estate.
King Canute deprived the bishops of this manor, but William, the
bishop, recovered it in the Conqueror's time.
The mansion-house of Cage
is nearly a mile west of the church, and the manor was several years in
the possession of the Fitz Walter family.
The Ray, a messuage
and marsh in this parish, was assigned by King Henry VIII. to his
forsaken queen, Anne of Cleeve.
The church of Southminster is large and
well built, the chancel having been re-erected with brick. The tower
contains five bells. On the wall at the east end of a chapel in
Southminster Hall yard, many years since turned into a barn, was lately
the following; Anno incarnationis 1573, capella ludilicuta in memoriam
Beatae M. V.
A topical Dictionary of the United Kingdom by Benjamin Pitts Caper and Richard Cooper 1813
Southminster is a parish in the hundred of Dengie, Essex 10 miles from Maldon and 47 miles from London.
Situated at the edge of the salt marshes, lying between the rivers Crouch and the Blackwater on the south east coast of the County.
It contains 145 houses and 1048 inhabitants.
It's fairs are three days before Easter, nine days before Whit Sunday, 22nd September and St Michael's Day.
The Rectory is valued at £21 in the patronage of the governors of The Charterhouse
Essex by J Charles Cox 1909
Southminster is a large clean
village, pleasantly situated an a peninsula between
the Crouch and the Blackwater.
The church (St
Leonard) is a large building consisting of apsidal
chancel, transepts, clerestoried nave, north porch,
and lofty embattled western tower. There are
traces of Norman about the nave, as in the plain
south doorway.
The walls of the aisleless nave are
curiously constructed. They are stuccoed round
the lower windows, then comes about 4 ft. of
dressed flints, in which are inserted three-light
I5th-cent. quasi-clerestory windows, and above
this is about 5 ft. of modern brick. It would
almost appear as if there had been former aisles.
A tablet in the nave states that the enlargement of
the church " to provide for the accommodation
of the lower orders " was completed in 1819 ; it
would seem that about this date, not only was
the nave remodeled, but that the chancel and
transepts, which had been rebuilt in brick about
a century earlier, were repaired. The north porch
is a fine piece of work of the first half of the 15 th
cent, with a richly groined roof and a room over it.
The octagonal font is of the same date and well
designed, but the bowl is unusually small, being 2 ft.
in diameter, though the height is 4 ft.
The south
tower is of three stages and is stuccoed, save for
the buttresses and battlements ; the latter are
chequered flint and stone.
The interior was
restored at considerable expense in 1892, when the
quire and transepts were enclosed in oak screens.
