Wix is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

in the

Tendring Tendring is a village and civil parish in Essex. It gives its name to the Tendring District and before that the Tendring Hundred. Its name was given to the larger groupings because it was at the centre, not because it was larger than the othe ...

district of north-east

Essex Essex ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East of England, and one of the home counties. It is bordered by Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Kent across the Thames Estuary to the ...

, England. It lies in a small valley about south of the Stour Estuary. The valley drains east towards

Harwich Harwich is a town in Essex, England, and one of the Haven ports on the North Sea coast. It is in the Tendring district. Nearby places include Felixstowe to the north-east, Ipswich to the north-west, Colchester to the south-west and Clacton-o ...

. Formerly an important crossroads on the route to Harwich, it has now been bypassed by the

A120 road The A120 is an A-road in England, which runs between Puckeridge in Hertfordshire and Harwich in Essex. Along its route, the A120 bypasses the towns of Bishop's Stortford, Great Dunmow, Braintree, Essex, Braintree, Coggeshall, Colchester and D ...

. The place-name 'Wix' is first attested in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book ( ; the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book") is a manuscript record of the Great Survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...

of 1086, where it appears as ''Wica''. It appears as ''Wikes'' in 1191 in the

Feet of Fines A foot of fine (plural, feet of fines; Latin: ''pes finis''; plural, ''pedes finium'') is the archival copy of the agreement between two parties in an English lawsuit over land, most commonly the fictitious suit (in reality a conveyance) known a ...

, and as ''Wiches'' in the Curia Regis Rolls in 1198. The name is the plural of the

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

'wic', meaning a dairy farm.

Eilert Ekwall Bror Oscar Eilert Ekwall (8 January 1877 in Vallsjö – 23 November 1964 in Lund) was a Swedish academic, Professor of English at Sweden's Lund University from 1909 to 1942 and one of the outstanding scholars of the English language in the firs ...

, ''The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names'', p.529. St Mary's Church, Wix has a detached

belfry The belfry /ˈbɛlfri/ is a structure enclosing bells for ringing as part of a building, usually as part of a bell tower or steeple. It can also refer to the entire tower or building, particularly in continental Europe for such a tower attached ...

, which stands in the churchyard and contains one bell. In 1961, the then owner of Wix Abbey Farm was ploughing in the church which was overgrown when he struck a large piece of dressed limestone, which with further investigation revealed a large stone coffin with a skeleton inside. Archaeologists were called in and dated the coffin to circa 1140, due to the decorative cross on the lid having Saxon influences. The skeleton is very likely that of Alexander de Wix, a founder of Wix Priory, which occupied the church grounds until the 12th century. This coffin is now on show, or was until recently on display in

Colchester Castle Colchester Castle is a Norman architecture, Norman castle in Colchester, Essex, England, dating from the second half of the eleventh century. The keep of the castle is mostly intact and is the largest example of its kind anywhere in Europe, d ...

. An almost identical but slightly smaller coffin from the same site can be found in the bellhouse, in the churchyard. There is one pub, The Waggon at Wix, which on Saturday evenings has live bands. There is also a village shop in Colchester Road next to Anglian Timber. There is an equestrian centre in Clacton Road which hosts dressage, show jumping and carriage driving.

Nearby places

The equestrian centre has now closed down

References

External links

Entry in Kelly's Directory of Essex, 1894

and earlier spellings of the name
St Mary's Church website
Villages in Essex Civil parishes in Essex Tendring {{essex-geo-stub