Great Warley

Great Warley (also known as Warley Abbess, Warley Magna, Warley Wallet or West Warley) is a village and former parish located 2.3 miles (3.7 km) south of Brentwood, Essex and 5.9 miles (9.5 km) north west of Romford. It is situated to the far south west of the county, on the B186 near to the Greater London boundary and the M25 motorway.

The original settlement of Wareleia was an Anglo-Saxon settlement located south of the existing Great Warley village. The name, Wareleia, had been reported to have different meanings, including "wood or clearing near a wear" or "a covenant or agreement", though in P. H. Reaney's 1935 book, Place Names of Essex, he stated that it was old English but obscure in meaning. In his book, Reaney stated that the spelling had changed from Werle in e.1045, with Warleia and Wareleia both being used in 1086.

Warley, in the Domesday Book of 1086, was at the time, one settlement which had been split under separate manors, Warley Abbess and Warley Franks:

The original church of St. Mary was built south of the current A127, with the first rector being recorded as John le Norreis in 1247. The ancient parish of Great Warley, was seven miles north to south but only 1 mile across at its widest part, and was separated from Little Warley in the east by a stream that passes through Bulphan Fen on its way to the Thames. The parish was part of the Hundred of Chafford and from 1836 the Romford Poor Union before the change in 1875 to the Romford Rural Sanitary District. It also came under the Brentwood Petty Sessional and County Court.

Great Warley Common at one time ran from the village and connected with the outskirts of Brentwood, as shown by Chapman and André's 1777 Map of Essex. The common, along with Little Warley common, were owned by George Winn, who started selling off the land for development, including 116 acres for Warley Barracks and another 172 acres for residential development. In 1855, the new ecclesiastical parish of Christ Church was setup, with northern parts of Great Warley, along with parts of South Weald and Shenfield parishes to serve the new residents. The old church at St. Mary's had been reported as totally inadequate for the growing population in 1851, with the rector's sister in law, Sarah Clay donating £1,000 to build the new church. By 1876, 1,416 people lived in the parish, though 1,004 were in the new church parish of Christ Church. This area would become a suburb of Brentwood and was named Warley to distinguish it from the villages of Great Warley and Little Warley. In 1858, the chancel at St. Mary's collapsed, so remodeling work commenced under the guidance of Samuel Sanders Teulon which was completed in 1860. However, with the village centre moving further away from the church, it fell into disrepair, and a new "Interim" church was built from wood in the grounds of "Fairfields", home of Rector Bailey. The first service was in 1892 attended by 140 parishioners, although the old church was continued to be used for funerals.

From 1894 the Great Warley parish formed part of Romford Rural District and covered an area of 2,793 acres (11.30 km²). In 1901 it had a population of 1,900. Great Warley Parish Council was the parish council from 1894 to 1934. In 1904, a replacement St. Mary's church opened after a local resident Eveline Heseltine donated the site and £5,000 towards it's cost. The parish was split in 1934 with 910 acres (3.7 km²) of its former area transferred to the Brentwood parish in Brentwood Urban District. The remaining area was transferred to Hornchurch Urban District which in 1965 was transferred to Greater London to form part of the London Borough of Havering. In 1993, following the first periodic review of Greater London, the boundary between Brentwood and Havering was locally realigned to the M25 motorway in the west and the London, Tilbury and Southend line in the south by the Essex and Greater London (County and London Borough Boundaries) (No.2) Order 1993. This transferred almost all of the remaining part of Great Warley in Greater London back to Essex.

The village sits on London Clay with an outcropping of Bagshot sands.

Great Warley comes under the parliamentary constituency of Brentwood and Ongar, which current MP Alex Burghart has held since 2017.