The area historically formed part of the
ancient parish of Halstead. In 1852, the parish was made a
local board district, administered by an elected local board. It was subsequently decided that the whole parish should not be included in the local board district, and so in 1866 the district was redefined to just cover the parts of the parish within a radius of the bridge over the
River Colne in the centre of the town. Such local board districts were reconstituted as
urban districts under the
Local Government Act 1894, which also directed that civil parishes could no longer straddle district boundaries. The old Halstead parish was therefore split into a Halstead Urban parish matching the urban district and a Halstead Rural parish covering the remainder of the old parish outside the urban district. On 1 October 1934, was transferred to Halstead Urban. The parish of Halstead Rural was later renamed Greenstead Green and Halstead Rural to incorporate the name of its largest settlement. The change of name happened sometime in the 1960s or early 1970s; sources conflict on exactly when it occurred. The parish contains a number of buildings of historical note. There are 35
listed buildings in the parish and two
scheduled ancient monuments. ==Governance==