BOREHAM, a parish in the hundred of CHELMSFORD,
county of ESSEX, 3 miles (N. E. by E.) from
Chelmsford, containing 918 inhabitants. The living is a
vicarage, in the archdeaconry of Essex, and diocese of
London, rated in the king's books at £10. 3. 9., and in
the patronage of the Bishop of London. The church
is dedicated to St. Andrew. The Chelmer and Blackwater
canal crosses the southern part of the parish.
The parochial school has an endowment of about £3
per annum, the gift of Robert Clough, in 1726; and
Edmund Butler, in 1717, appropriated land for clothing
and instructing poor children of Little Barlow and
Boreham. New Hall, in this parish, is part of a much
larger mansion supposed to have been built in the reign
of Henry VII., and greatly adorned by Henry VIII.,
who, having obtained the manor in exchange for other
property, raised it into an honour: his daughter, the
Princess Mary, also resided here for several years. It
afterwards came into the possession of Villiers, the first
duke of Buckingham, and, on the attainder of his son;
was purchased by Cromwell. After the Restoration it
became the property of the Duke of Albemarle, but
has since been purchased by a few opulent individuals
professing the Roman Catholic faith, and is now occupied
by a society of English nuns, who were driven from
Liege by the fury of the French republicans, and who
now superintend the education of about eighty Roman
Catholic young ladies. The splendid chapel which belonged
to the mansion, and which contained the painted
window now in St. Margaret's church, Westminster, was
taken down about eighty years ago, and the great hall
of the building has since been converted into a chapel.