1733 Great Braxted, Essex       On the 25 November James Rushing was christened.

1734 Bulmer, Essex        Thomas Russian was buried 6 January 1734.

1737 Smallpox epidemic May 1737 to May 1738. Daughter of Thomas Rushen buried at Sudbury on the 18 November, one of thirty two deaths in November due to smallpox.

1750 Witham was changing fast, weavers were dwindling,the number of firms fell to two and the fulling mill had apparently become no more than a corn mill. The apprenticing of boys and girls to Witham weavers, frquent until about 1740, stopped rather abruptly. From 1750 agriculture moved forward. Essex farmers could now probably sell to London everything they produced. Farms were well chalked, fenced and drained, and they were being enlarged to a size sufficient to prosper in an arable region. Poor rates rose, but only because prices and population were increasing. Most artisans lived the comfortable, unexciting life of the Great Braxted blacksmith who around 1750 supplied a ladder, a dew rake and parts for ploughs and harrows to one farmer, and spliced a plough handle,'headed' a foot plough and made wheelbarrows for another. He farmed some land before transferring this to his two sons and did not expand beyond his own vicinity. When John Strutt, of Wickham Bishops Mill, died, the sale catalogue of his property showed that his large house had been richly furnished and that he had owned two coaches. The chief gardener at Braxted Park was paid 11s 6d weekly. In 1751 1s 6d was paid a week to a permanently ill woman in Wickham Bishops to buy food, rent and clothes were paid for separately. Medicine and aids for the disabled were frequent items in an overseers accounts, like the 'stuff to cure the itch for Harvey's girl' at Wickham Bishops. Nursing was also provided in 1751, a girl being paid 3s to nurse her mother. After 1750 many Suffolk people moved into Essex, mostly they left South Suffolk for North Essex. Some as we know came to central Essex and settled in Chelmsford, Writtle, Witham, Wickham Bishops and Hatfield Peverell.

1759 Rayleigh, Essex       James Rushen married Judith Forster 26 June 1759.

1761 A woman who ran Great Braxted's workhouse with her daughters help received five guineas annually and board for herself, her daughter and her husband, who had his own occupation. Food was usually adequate. Between 1756-62 plenty of meat, butter, sprats, eggs, milk, beans, apples and once two whole pigs. No doubt these had come from the workhouse piggery. One months purchases included 80 lbs of fresh meat, 80 lb of 'bull beef' and 38 lb of cheese.

1765 Wickham Bishops.        Hannah Rushen was born.

1768 Rising incomes enabled the middle and upper classes to build new houses or modernise old ones, to furnish them elegantly, to dress fashionably and to travel in expensive carriages and other vehicles. Though they patronised London firms, they often drew on the services of local artisans. Two luxury trades to benefit were clockmakers and wig makers, with one wigmaker setting up in business in Tolleshunt D'Arcy.

1770 Benfleet.        Elizabeth Rushin was christened.

1774 People using the Witham - Maldon road succeeded in eliminating one of the worst hazards of that important route, the ford through the Blacwater at Wickham Mill, which was dangerous in wintry weather and could only be avoided by those paying 1s to use the private bridge at the mill. Farmers and merchants pressed Quarter Sessions for a public bridge and obtained grants of £210 and £80 on condition that the bridge should be a free parish maintained service.

1777 Little Braxted.        Hannah Rushen was christened on 7 September.

1781 A number of clergymen were helping to spread the progressive methods of farming owning or renting whole farms. Others like the vicar of Great Braxted farmed to feed themselves.

1781 Rivenhall, St. Mary & All Saints.      Jemima daughter of Sarah Rushen christened 14 January 1781.

1784 An unskilled labourer at Wickham Bishops mill got his keep and 2s 6d weekly, approximately what a farm labourer would have paid if living in the farm house. The mill at Wickham Bishops was a water mill like those at Great and Little Braxted. Both Little Braxted and Wickham Bishops mills were listed in the Domesday Book. (A.D.1086)

1794 By 1794 the number of people employed in the woolen industry around Colchester had fallen to 8,000 from a peak of 20,000 before the wars with Spain. Spain was the chief foreign market for Essex woolen makers. The decay of the woolen industry led to an increase in pauperism, with the result that in 1801 about seventeen out of every hundred of the population was relieved from the rates. By 1840 this once flourishing industry had vanished from Colchester.

1800 Up until this time farm labourers usually served one master for a long period, sometimes for a lifetime. Farmworkers' children started work as soon as they could earn, the girls as spinners, the boys on farms. Young workers sometimes lived in the farmhouse, especially if working away from home, and so did some older bachelors. From now on greater mobility reduced the length of service with one employer.

1812 A Penny Post was established at Maldon with footpost to Goldhanger and Tolleshunt D'Arcy.

1830 After two poor harvests there was distress in every village. No recovery had taken place by 1833 and large reductions in staff were being reported on individual farms. Resort to theft to feed their families exposed labourers to harsh sentences. Two Wickham Bishops labourers were imprisoned for three months and beaten for stealing six fowls.

1848 On the 15 August the railway line between Witham and Maldon,five and three quarter miles in length with a stop at Wickham Bishops and Langford, was opened for goods traffic. Passenger services started on the 2 October.

1851-71 Essex women and girls in regular agricultural employment decreased from 556 to 327 and indoor female farm servants from 2,343 to 693. The only escape from a life of poverty open to girls was to to London where domestic and factory work was available. If they stayed they almost always married farm workers and for the rest of their lives faced an unending struggle to enable their families to survive. At the end of their lives labourers' wives or widows were likely to have to subsist on the lowest possible allowance before entering the workhouse to die. Several Rushen families were to know both workhouse and charity in their lives. The quality of education was poor for labourers children until the 1860s. Some limited public money then became available but improvements were slow. Evidence is shown in Rushen marriage certificates where the majority could not sign their own name. Real social gains in 1850-72 were slight,with many cottages very poor in size, sanitation and repair.

1873 Emigration was suggested by the labourers Union as a means to escape the poverty on the farms. Parties were formed in a number of Suffolk and Essex villages and on a morning in April 1874 they converged on their nearest railway station to board the train for Tilbury where the "St. James" was waiting to bear them away to Australia. The lagest party, 200, boarded the train at Witham junction. The "St. James" sailed on the 19 April and arrived at Maryborough, Australia on 23 July 1874.
Although all Essex farmers refused to recognise the Union, a majority of them refrained from attempts to crush it in 1872-74. Their reluctance had several causes, goodwill towards their own men and a desire not to accelerate migration. However after 1874 migration slowed down and the agricultural depression set in by 1875. Its chief cause was the fall in wheat prices caused by cheap imports from the USA and Russia. Essex wheat acreage declined from 201,000 in 1874 to 93,000 in 1895 with prices being halved.

1878-88 The bleak summer of 1878 with poor and rain damaged crops,the low prices marked a new stage in the labourers depressing world. Labourers attempting to start a Union branch at Great Braxted were immediately dismissed. Still a closely controlled village where the Du Canes of Braxted Park owned most of the property, they and their tenants opposed the Union from the start in 1873. A small but determined group of Graet Braxted labourers stood firm and maintained a small branch for six years, defying as best they could the attempts to silence them, insisting on discussing their business at the Du Cane Arms. William Rushen received bread on 17 November 1878 from the John Freese charity in Little Braxted. 1879 was even worse with reductions in wages and staff. Depression in the industrial areas discouraged migration and farmers were determined to dispense with even more labour. In July 1882 a branch of the N.A.L.U. was formed at Wickham Bishops.

1884 At 9.20am on the 22nd of April an earthquake struck Essex. It was centred on the rural farming district just to the south east of Colchester in the vicinity of Peldon, Abberton and Wivenhoe. Tolleshunt D'arcy and Tolleshunt Major were hard hit. Its impact was experienced within a radius of 150 miles. It shattered more than 1,200 buildings, huge fissures opened up in the ground,enormous waves swept along rivers and spilled over the banks, panic was widespread. Sir Charles Du Cane was sitting at the writing table in the hall of his house at Braxted Park. The following day he wrote of his experiences in a letter to The Essex Standard. He tells of all the bells in the house being set ringing by the violent shaking of the house. The horses in the stable were frightened and reared and plunged violently. The only damage to the house was a crack in a bedroom ceiling

1900 The post man making the deliveries from the Witham Post Office to Little Braxted was still using the penny-farthing cycle, long after later models were introduced. Mills, wind & water were part of the countryside scene and also provided employment in their area. A smock mill stood east of Mill Lane eighty yards south of its junction with the road to Tolleshunt D'Arcy. (Tolleshunt Beckingham Green) First noted in the records in 1739 it continued in work until 1914 before finally being demolished in 1924. Local owners included William Larkin a farmer of Great Totham who purchased it for £407 10s in June 1840 but resold it within the year to occupier miller Simon Sampson for £520. Very rare were the millwrights' visits- limited to trimming of wooden cogs by Rowland of Wickham Bishops. A post mill which had stood at Tollesbury was moved circa 1888 to Tolleshunt D'Arcy at Oxley Green. Known as Oxley Green Mill, latterly Posford's Mill it stood about 50 yards west of the Plough Inn. Joseph Sorrell the younger took on the lease in 1858 and surrendered it in 1861. In 1863 a Joseph Sorrell, farmer - miller is given as leasing Virley or Smith's Mill. Three mills stood at Great & Little Totham. A post mill stood for many years in the centre of Great Totham near the Bull, this was referred to as Brown's Mill. Mentioned in 1718 it had a chequered history. Following Joseph Bridge (1796-1808) came Daniel Taylor who was bankrupt by 1810. By 1811 his successor, Samuel Unwin, absconded, being threatened with bankruptcy if he did not meet his creditors. One possible family connection to occupy the mill was Reuben Cottee who was in residence when the mill was put up for auction in 1833. The last known working date for the mill was in 1886 with it being pulled down by Digby's steam engine in 1911. Variously called Frost's, then Pulford's, finally King's Mill it stood in the north of Great Totham parish near the Compasses.It to was pulled down by Digby of Braxted in 1911. Smith's Mill, long known as Barrow Hill Mill stood on raised ground south of the Goldhanger road and immediately north east of The Millbeach public house. Erected in 1703 it stood about 350 yards from the tide mill which was in Great Totham parish, and the two were worked in conjunction. In 1831 Little Totham windmill, held by Mr Green, was destroyed by a hurricane on the 30th of June. After the collapse a stock mill was erected on the site, taking some five months to complete. Misfortune struck again in September 1880 when the mill was tail winded and damage to the amount of £40 was caused. One of the last hands to work in the mill before it was demolished in 1892 was Abraham Springett.