The Manor of Southchurch was donated to the monks of Holy Trinity, Canterbury (Christ Church, Cathedral, Priory), before the Norman Conquest. In 1066 and 1086 it was enrolled as four hides and pastures, woodlands and two fisheries, in all about 1,240 acres mostly situated in what is now Southchurch Parish but with a detached estate situated at Leigh. Unlike Milton Manor, also held by the Monks of Canterbury, Southchurch paid no food-rent but instead paid a £10 "gersum".

In the 12th century the manor became a mesne lordship and was held at "fee-ferme" by the de Southchurch family from the mid-12th to the mid-14th centuries. Here the family built their manor house and a stone chapel (now the parish church): it was the centre of a large estate covering properties from Shoebury and Sutton to Leigh and Canvey Island (part of Canvey being acquired in the 13th century as additional pasture for a second flock of sheep). Sir Richard de Southchurch (III), c.1225-1293, was Sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire in 1265-1267 and also perhaps c.1272, and in 1279-1283 he was the King's Steward of the Liberty of Rochford. His son, Sir Peter de Southchurch, c.1255-1309, was appointed a Justice of Oyer and Terminer in 1300, one of only three Essex .knights to be a Justice over the King's officers. Both men were fighting knights, Sir Peter serving in Scotland in 1301-1302 and Sir Richard probably serving in Wales. Indeed, Sir Peter may have died on, or as a result of, active service in Scotland.

In 1309 Sir Peter died and within five months his wife Joan (a relative of the Earl of Warwick) also died leaving two young daughters as the heirs in law as well as a disinherited son, Henry, who was a clerk at Prittlewell Priory. Sir Robert de Rochford obtained the sole guardianship and trusteeship of the heiresses and their fortune but Henry made a determined attempt to obtain at least a part of his father's estate. When Henry died in 1343 the male line of the de Southchurch family came to an end and the son of Alice de Southchurch granted the manor of Southchurch to one William Dersham (an officer in the Earl of Northampton's household) who leased it for a period to John of Prittlewell, a London spice merchant. William also used his interest in the Manor as a surety for his friends, Messrs. Swanland, Chiriton and Company, financiers to the Crown, but in 1349 the Black Death hit the southern seaports and London and Swanland, Chiriton and Company crashed. The Crown foreclosed on the sureties, William was ruined and the revenues of Southchurch Manor were forfeited to the Crown until the surety was recovered.

Following this the Chief Tenant (Canterbury Priory) negotiated a release with the Crown and William's trustees released the manor: Canterbury then recovered the estate and from then onwards seem to have let it on short leases to a succession of tenants until the Priory itself was suppressed in 1539 when the Crown acquired the Manor and regranted it, in 1545, to Sir Richard Lord Riche. He leased the manor to wealthy tenant farmers and so it remained until c. 1650 when the manor was divided into two, the Hall estate and the Wick Farm, with smaller tenancies at Wyatts and Butterys farms. By the mid-18th century the Wick was the largest farm and Southchurch Hall itself had been divided into two tenements. In the mid-19th century Southchurch Hall was bought up and converted back into a single large farmhouse.

In 1900 Southchurch Hall was known as Wiffen's Farm and by 1927 it was in poor structural condition and surrounded by new housing estates. In that year Alderman Dowsett presented the Hall to the County Borough of Southend-on-Sea and in 1928-1929 it was restored to serve as a local library and the surrounding medieval earthworks were turned into public gardens. Only in 1974, when the local library moved to a new building in Lifstan Way, was the hall finally opened as a museum.

The oldest inhabited house in Essex is thought to be Southchurch Hall. The present building appears to have been erected during the lifetime of Sir Richard de Southcourt, who died in 1294, but the late Mr. P. M. Johnson, F.S.A., F.R.I.B.A., who caried out the restoration of the Hall on behalf of Southend Corporation, exposed foundations which he believed to have been laid about 800 AD.

At the end of the fourteenth century, on the evidence of an inventory of that time, the Hall consisted of a central hall, a parlour, several sleeping rooms, a chapel, a kitchen, a larder, a brewhouse, a bakehouse, a dairy and other outbuildings. The whole was surrounded by walls of wattle and daub.

Until 1545 the manor belonged to the Prior and Convent of Christ Church, Canterbury. The Hall and its lands were then let to a succession of tenant farmers until the end of the nineteenth century, when they were bought by Thomas Dowsett, the first mayor of Southend, whose family farmed the land until 1925. The building and five acres of land were then presented to Southend for the use of the public.

A condition of the offer was that the earthworks and moat, and the historical interest of the Hall itself, were to be preserved. The building was therefore restored, the earthworks repaired, the moat filled with water, and the surrounding land laid out as gardens. In 1931 Southchurch Hall was opened as a branch library for the town.

The restoration revealed a fine timber-framed hall, mainly of the thirteenth century, the east end framed by a wooden screen. In the south wall is a fourteenth-century doorway with a richly carved arch. Two pieces of fourteenth-century timber framing, now exhibited in one of the lower rooms, are thought to have been taken from the rood screen which, in pre-Reformation times, spanned the chancel arch of Holy Trinity Church, Southchurch.