Steeple with Stansgate, both
to the east of Mundon, having on the north Maldon river; the adjacent
isle of Ramsey is also in the parish of Steeple
From Domesday book it
appears that the original name of this place was Ulfwine's Cherche, which being thought too long, was changed into that of Steeple, seeming
to imply that the neighbouring churches were without this ornament.
Steeple Hall, the manor-house, is on the north side of the church.
The
manor, some years since, became the property of St. Bartholomew's
Hospital, London.
Stansgate is in this parish, near the water.
A topical Dictionary of the United Kingdom by Benjamin Pitts Caper and Richard Cooper 1813
Steeple is a parish in the hundred of Dengie, Essex 5 miles from Maldon and 42 miles from London.
It contains 14 houses and 342 inhabitants.
It is on a creek of the Blackwater..
The Rectory is valued at £15 18sh 1d and is united with Stansgate.
Essex by J Charles Cox 1909
Steeple (3 m. from Southminster).
The old
church (St Laurence and All Saints) was un-happily pulled down in 1882 and a new one
erected in the centre of the village ; an old door-
way and one window were reused, and the
octagonal font bowl is an old one which had long
lain in the former churchyard.
At Stansgate, in
this parish, on the Blackwater, there was a small
Cluniac priory, and cell of the great house of
Lewes, founded early in the 12th cent.
It was
dissolved in 1525 in favour of Wolsey's college
scheme.
There were then a prior and seven
monks in residence, and its annual value was
£43, 8s. 6d.
Portions of the priory church still
remain, and are used as a barn.
Durrants Handbook for Essex - 1887
A long village, near a considerable creek of the same name, and at the foot of a gentle slope overlooking the marshes beside the Blackwater estuary.
At Stansgate , now a hamlet of this parish, a Cluniac Priory was founded in 1175 as a cell to Lewes Priory.