CRANHAM

Cranham, Essex , 4½ miles east-southeast from Romford Station of the Great Eastern Railway (through Hornchurch and Upminster); an agricultural parish of 437 inhabitants: there is no village.

The Church (All Saints) stands nearly ½ mile from the road, on an upland affording a broad prospect towards the Laindon Hills. It is of flint and stone, irregularly laid; in part very old, and, despite whitewash, picturesque. On each side of the chancel are three lancets; the east window is later. At the west end is an odd-looking tower, consisting of a low, very wide, semioctagonal, red brick base, running up by a tiled roof to a small square wooden belfry, which is crowned with a slated roof.

Cranham Hall, by the church, was of old the manor-house, the manor being named "Cranham Hall, otherwise Bishop's Ockenden. In it lived for 40 years, and died (July 1, 1785), General Oglethorpe, the first of our legislators who sought to ameliorate the miserable condition of imprisoned debtors; the founder of the colony of Georgia as "a place of refuge for the distressed people of Britain, and the persecuted Protestants of Europe," and the leader of the first band of colonists, and founder of the city of Savannah (Feb. 1732); celebrated in verse by Pope; the friend of Johnson, Burke, and Goldsmith, and familiar by name to every reader of Boswell. Oglethorpe invited Goldsmith to visit him here, " if a farm and a mere country scene will be a little refreshment from the smoke of London."

[Handbook to The Environs of London : James Thorne 1876]

All Saints' Church c.1906
Picture from Tony Benton's postcard collection

Church Records:

• All Saints, The Chase
  Baptisms 1559-1937, Marriages 1559-1964, Burials 1558-1938 : ERO
  Monumental Inscriptions : EoLFHS Publications

Other Information:

An in-depth study of Cranham by A.W. Fox and Jeff Kelsey. updated May 2003