Thundersley
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Thundersley

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Thundersley

Thundersley is a town in the Castle Point borough of southeast Essex, England. It sits on a clay ridge shared with Basildon and Hadleigh, 31 miles (50 km) east of Charing Cross, London. In 2011 it had a population of 24,800.

The ecclesiastical parish of Thundersley St Peter takes in Daws Heath to the east which is also part of the current St Michaels local government electoral ward. The two areas have Anglican churches. A third Anglican church is in the secular ward of St John's, which is commonly conflated on maps with South Benfleet which it adjoins and it is separated from Thundersley by a narrow green buffer. As of the May 2024 local elections, the main wards in the area are Thundersley North and Thundersley South.

Thundersley derives from the Old English Þunres lēah = "grove or meadow [perhaps sacred] belonging to the god Thunor or Thor". It has also historically been known as Thunresleam.[citation needed] The place-name is first attested in the Domesday Book of 1086, where it appears as Thunreslea.

The place-name is historically significant as a survival from England's pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon paganism.

The area is relatively hilly for Essex, a typical height for the central and eastern part of (old) Thundersley is about 200 feet (60 m) above sea level. The town is partly rural, with large woods and commons; including Thundersley Common (a Site of Special Scientific Interest), Shipwrights Wood (12 hectares) and Thundersley Glen all owned and managed by the council; West Wood (22½ hectares acres) owned by the council and managed by Castle Point Wildlife Group; Tile Wood (6½ hectares) and Pound Wood (22¼ hectares) are owned by the Essex Wildlife Trust; Starvelarks Wood and Wyburns Wood are both part of Little Haven Nature Reserve (37¼ hectares) which is owned by Havens Hospice Trust and leased to Essex Wildlife Trust; Coombe Wood is under mixed ownership and much of it has Village Green status.

A clear majority of households in all wards are economically employed (or in self-employment). The proportion of people who are retired is slightly higher than the national average.

The wards have a high rate of owner-occupation. In the 2011 census tenure is stated for all 8570 wards of England and Wales, all of Thundersley's wards ranked between 236th and 341st as to this statistic (the degree to which the census returnees stated they owned their homes either outright or with a mortgage). Specifically these varied in owner-occupation between 87.5% and 88.6%, the average in the jurisdiction being 67.8%.

Samuel Lewis's major work, a Topographical Dictionary of England in 1848 gives this account:

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