Find your ancestors in Essex Burial Index 1530-1950

Find out if your British ancestor died in the county of Essex by searching more than 200,000 records from 1530 to 1950. Discover where and when your ancestor was buried.

Each record is a transcript of the original source. The information contained may vary, but you can find out the following about your ancestor:

  • Name
  • Sex
  • Age
  • Denomination
  • Marital status
  • Birth year
  • Burial year
  • Burial date
  • Burial place
  • Place, county and country

There are 201,478 transcripts created from a variety of both parish and probate sources. Some areas and some time periods have more coverage than others. This is not intended to be a complete collection of all burials in Essex between the dates shown. The burial records show several unknown people buried in Essex. A “Poor Stranger” was buried in 1723, while “A Man Unknown” died without a name in 1836 in Barking.

Essex is a county in the southeast of England. Today, the county sits alongside Greater London, within the Metropolitan Green Belt. The original county of Essex was founded by the Saxons in 527 AD and lay north of the River Thames and east of the River Lee. Essex was the family seat of the de Vere family, who played a major part in English politics in the 14th and 15th centuries. In the records, you can find John de Vere, the 16th Earl of Oxford, who died in 1562 in Castle Hedingham.

The Earl was instrumental in bringing Queen Mary, the only child of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon, to the throne in July 1553. Mary was a member of the Tudor Dynasty, chiefly remembered for the restoration of Roman Catholicism in England. She had over 280 religious dissenters burnt at the stake during her 5-year reign. John de Vere was also a keen sportsman and kept a troupe of actors, known as Oxford’s Men.