Search History House
Alphabetical list of Essex towns and villages and their histories.
This list does not include those places which are now part of Greater London. A list of these can be found on the The East of London Family History Society's web site. There is one exception: Chingford. This is now in the London Borough of Waltham Forest. For this you could try the Chingford Historical Society
A useful resource for finding out contiguous parishes (those parishes that immediately surround a parish or location) is England Jurisdictions 1851 on familysearch.org.