HEREFORDSHIRE
The information on this page, and on the accompanying
Town & Parish pages is organised by the set of subject
headings which the LDS Family History Library use for categorising
genealogical research material. Below are the available headings for
Herefordshire; but see
How the information on this server is presented to the user for
further details, and for an overall list. [Hint: Press the "Back" arrow
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Description in 1887
"HEREFORDSHIRE, an inland Co.
[Map (above) shows location],
on the SE. border of Wales, and bounded N. by Shropshire and Worcestershire, E.
by Worcestershire and Gloucestershire, S. by Gloucestershire and
Monmouthshire, and W. by Monmouthshire, Radnorshire, mid
Brecknockshire; greatest length N. and S. 38 miles, greatest breadth
E. and W. 35 miles; 532,918 acres, population 121,062. The Co. is
almost circular in form, and its surface shows a series of quiet and
beautiful undulations. It is watered by the Wye, Lugg, Monnow, Arrow,
and Frome, also the Teme, which flows on the NE. boundary. All these
streams are well stocked with fish. Of late agriculture has been
greatly improved in the Co. the soil is peculiarly suitable for the
growth of timber, which is very abundant. The pear and apple orchards
of Herefordshire are famous; while the luxuriant meadow-land affords
pasture for a well-known breed of oxen. Marl and clay form the chief
part of the soil; the subsoil is mostly limestone. There are no
valuable minerals, and the manufactures are insignificant."
[Bartholomew's Gazetteer of the British Isles, 1887]
- All Herefordshire pages may be searched using the
GENUKI Search engine.
The GENUKI Parish Locator
may be used to identify which town or parish a place is located in.
- There is a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) file
for these Herefordshire pages.
- Researchers may find one or more of the
Herefordshire Mailing Lists useful in their research; and Herefordshire
Surnames being researched are listed within Graham Jaunay's
On-line English Names Directory.
- Volunteers are being sought to help to transcribe the
1871 Census for Herefordshire, to make the whole part of
a free searchable database online. Visit the
FreeCEN
web site for more details, and if you'd like to volunteer.
- A list of the major items (including external links) in the Herefordshire section of
GENUKI is provided on a separate page of Quick Links.
- Botzum, Richard & Catherine - The 1675 Thomas Blount
Manuscript History of Herefordshire. Lapridge Publications,
25 Church St. Hereford, HR1 2LR. £10.99.
The extant portion of the original source from which this translation is derived
(covering places K-Y) is at Hereford City Library. The first part of the original
history (A-K) went missing during the 1700s, but, as the translation explains,
some of it survived in extracts by others, and these extracts (Aconbury to
Kinnersley) have also been included in this publication as Section I. Places
K-Y constitute Section II, and a third section provides information about Hereford
Cathedral, Bishops of Hereford, Nobility of the County, 'Wonders', Sheriffs of
Herefordshire, and Mayors of Hereford, and there is an overall surname index.
- Crow, Alan - Bridges on the river Wye. Lapridge
Publications, 1995.
This is a very entertaining little book, painstakingly researched and documenting
all known bridges on the Wye, past and present. Begins with bridges in the upper
reaches, where the railway bridges and landowners building private footbridges to
reach different parts of their estate hold sway, through to the bridges in the City
of Hereford, and on to the mouth of the Wye where the possible crossing built by
the Romans sits close by the new road bridge.
- Eisel, John and Shoesmith, Ron - The Pubs of Bromyard, Ledbury
& East Herefordshire. Logaston Press, 2003.
Another entertaining book. Almost every other building in Ledbury seems to
have been a public house at some time in the past!
- Harnden, J. (Ed) - The Parish registers of Herefordshire.
Published by The Friends of Hereford Record Office, 1987.
Contains a map showing parish boundaries, and notes on other source material, such
as Directories, Poll Books and Newspapers. Out of Print, but may be available
in Reference Libraries.
- Perry, Raymond - Anglo-Saxon Herefordshire. Published
by the Oxengard Press.
For more details see
www.anglo-saxonherefordshire.co.uk
- Salter, Mike - The Old Parish Churches of Herefordshire. Folly Publications.
I can recommend this book personally - like
others in his Old Parish Churches series, it is
extremely well-researched, and for me, a regular source of reference.
- Salter, Mike - The Castles of Herefordshire and Worcestershire. Folly Publications.
Another excellent and interesting book from Mike.
- Shoesmith, Ron - Castles & Moated Sites of Herefordshire. Logaston Press.
- Search database of Church & Parish details on
The Diocese of Hereford website.
Added 15 Jun 2007.
-
Post Medieval Chapels in Herefordshire. The site has a Gazetteer to assist
in location of Chapels by place. Added 24 Nov 2005.
- The Britannia, "America's Gateway to the British Isles"
Index of Parish Churches features about 20 Herefordshire Churches.
- A list of
Church Photographs available (by post) of over 100 Herefordshire
parishes (part of the
Herefordshire Family History Society site).
Please remember to include a stamped, self-addressed envelope,
or International Reply Coupons (IRCs) when enquiring for details.
- You may also find it worthwhile searching in the GENUKI church database.
Enter the name of the place in which the church is located:
- Some Herefordshire parish registers (in PDF format, at a modest price)
are available from the
English Parish Registers website. Added 22 Nov 2008.
-
The Forest of Dean Parish Records Project - transcriptions (in
progress) of baptisms, marriages and burials in Forest of Dean parishes
for the period 1813-1901. Now includes some Herefordshire parishes, and
results are free to access after a simple registration process.
Added 22 Nov 2008.
- Transcriptions of
Hereford Bishops' Registers, and in particular the
names of Rectors (or Vicars) and their Patrons for each Benefice of
Hereford Institutions, provided by Mel Lockie. Added 9 Oct 2007.
- The searchable LDS website - IGI and Familysearch
Note on using IGI Batch Numbers:
It is not always easy to locate your ancestors in the IGI using the search mechanisms provided at
the above LDS site. Manually typing the batch numbers into the IGI search screen can be tedious.
Hugh Wallis has made an exhaustive search of the likely ranges of batch numbers and created a
database of those numbers and the source records that they apply to. A very powerful feature included
is a hotlink from each batch number to the actual search engine provided at the Family Search site,
including the ability to enter the surname you are looking for. This makes it very easy to search all the
batches for a particular geographic location using just the last name you are searching for - something
that is not possible directly from the LDS site without doing a lot of typing. This is
Hugh Wallis's site.
- Stephen Karner is transcribing a series of entries from
Herefordshire Parish Registers for the purposes of his own
research. Although the entries he's transcribed should not be
construed as complete for any parish, they cover a wide range of
surnames, and his site is very well worth a visit.
You can also find links to his transcriptions by parish by
selecting your parish of interest from the list on the
Herefordshire Towns and Parishes page.
- The Society of Genealogists web site has a
list of their holdings of
Parish Register Copies for Herefordshire.
- Information on the location of
Quaker Records in
Herefordshire provided by the Quaker FHS.
- Copies of certificates of Birth, Death and Marriage may be obtained from either
the General Register Office (GRO), or from the Superintendent Registrar's Office in
the District they were first issued. If the District no longer exists, this would be the
Office to which its registers have been moved.
- If ordering from a District (Superintendant's) Register Office, please note the following:
- the cost of a certificate is £7.00 (from 1st April 2003)
- send a Sterling cheque payable to the Superintendent Registrar
plus return postage or two International Reply Coupons;
- the General Register Office (GRO) Index references (available via FreeBMD) are of no value;
- for marriage certificates, the precise place of marriage must be given;
- Civil Registration in England and Wales began on July 1st 1837.
Information about which Local Register Office to contact may be found in Brett
Langston's list of
Herefordshire Registration Districts (1837-1974).
- If you have a GRO reference, you can now order certificates through
the General Register Office's own website, and their
Certificate Ordering Service for the same price as locally.
You can obtain a GRO reference in several ways:-
- Searching microfilm or fiche at a Library or LDS Family History Centre.
- FreeBMD is an ongoing project to make the General
Register Office (GRO) Indexes freely available online. More volunteers are needed and details of how you can help are available on-site.
- findmypast.com (formerly 1837online) - images of the complete BMD indexes from the GRO online. Fee payable
- The images are also available on Ancestry.co.uk for which
a subscription provides access to a wide range of other records.
- The Prison Service Museum near Rugby houses HM Prison Service's historical
collection of exhibits, illustrating the history of imprisonment from medieval times
to the present day. Housed in a converted stable block, the museum contains
reconstructions of Victorian prison architecture, and exhibits include the
last set of Gibbet Irons used in England. Smaller items include bone
carvings and paintings made by prisoners in their cells, and a nineteenth
century sampler embroidered by a female prisoner from her own hair
Admission to the museum is by appointment only, please contact:-
The Curator,
HM Prison Service Museum,
Newbold Revel,
Rugby,
CV23 0TH
Tel: 01788 834168
[Information compiled from "The Penal Lexicon Home Page",
formerly at www.penlex.org.uk/pages/index.html.]
- Herefordshire has many
Timber-Framed Houses - its so-called "Black and White" Villages.
These buildings may be found dating from the fourteenth to as late as the nineteenth
century. The timber was usually oak, but with elm used occasionally for partitioning
internally, and floor boarding.
"Pre-fabricated" would be an apt description of their building. The master
carpenter would pre-cut all the sections of wood, together with (presumably) all the
necessary jointing requirements. The cross frames were then raised into position
and linked with the pieces prepared for the side walls. The spaces were then infilled
with lath and plaster or daub on wattle. Today's 'black and white' is thought to be
a comparatively modern feature - originally the timber would be left untreated, and
the infill would be either ochre-coloured or lime washed.
(Ref: Sanford, Anne - Old Herefordshire Photographs.
Published by Hendon Publishing Co. Ltd. 1985. ISBN 08606709882888)
- Nigel Batty-Smith's site providing
UK Genealogy Archives of Herefordshire has a description of the county
from The Comprehensive Gazetteer of England and Wales, 1894-5.
- The transcription of the section for Herefordshire from
the National Gazetteer (1868) provided by Colin Hinson.
- The transcription of the section for Miscellaneous Descriptions from
the National Gazetteer (1868) provided by Colin Hinson. Included
here are the descriptions of major topological features (rivers, hills &c.)
and a descriptions of the county hundred divisions.
- You may also find it worthwhile searching in the GENUKI Gazetteer:-
The GENUKI Gazetteer covers the whole of England, Wales and Scotland and can be searched by
place-name (or part of a place-name) or Ordnance Survey Grid Reference (six-figure, eg SO510400).
If there are multiple place-names matching the name you enter, you will be presented initially with a
drop-down list of the matching place-names with their distances and bearings from Hereford.
-
English Heritage Viewfinder - site with historic photographs,
searchable by county. Has some unusual ones of the Industrial
Age which won't be found amongst the more usual postcard collections!.
-
The Francis Frith Collection - a collection of
over 700,000 photographs of the UK, Europe and the Middle East taken by the
Victorian photographer Francis Frith.
- A Vision of Britain Through Time -
information about your home area from the 2001 census, and from each British
census back to 1801. Presented both as maps of the whole country and as graphs
showing change over time.
- A digital library of medieval and modern sources of the history of the British Isles -
British History Online.
Notable sources include Journals of the House of Commons and House of
Lords, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, and the Victoria County History.
Added 14 Oct 2005.
-
Herefordshire Sites & Monuments Record -
a record of all known archaeological and historic sites in
Herefordshire; but not just archaeology -
also features Canals, Railways, Workhouses, Prisons
and much more.
- An
Encyclopaedia of British History: 1700-1950 - useful for seeing
local events against a national perspective. Scroll down the introductory
page on this site to see topics - Monarchy, Child Labour, The Railways, &c.
- The Domesday Book Online
"to enable visitors to find out the history of the Domesday Book and to
give an insight into life at the time of its compilation". Note this site does not
provide the original text, but does include a list settlements existing in 1086.
- Some abstracts of
Herefordshire Feet of Fines (land conveyances) of various dates - on
Chris Phillips
Medieval English Genealogy web site. Added 22 May 2007.
- Mike Durtnall is providing a country-wide collection of
Historical Manuscripts
Pages recording details of deeds that have been offered for sale on eBay
and in auction catalogues. In most cases whereabouts of the documents will be
unknown, but sufficient details of the property involved and of buyers, sellers,
mortages, &c. is provided to make them a useful research tool.
Added 9 Mar 2007.
- Pat Johnson has a large collection of original
Family Deeds. Abstracts, with name and parish indexes are provided onsite,
with transcriptions of the full documents available for a modest fee. In addtion, the original
deed may also be available for purchase if required. Added 3 Mar 2004. Updated 19 Sep 2007.
- The Harvard Law School Library's
English Deeds Collection contains detailed summaries of some Deeds relating to
Herefordshire. The site 'Search' for 'herefordshire' may be expected to return nine entries.
Updated 27 Apr 2006.
- Robin Alston has created
The Country House Database, a very useful reference source,
"listing country houses in the British Isles from the late medieval
period to ca. 1850, together with an index to all the families so far
traced as having occupied them." Includes a section on
Herefordshire.
- British
History Online - Ordnance Survey 1:10,560 Maps -
The County Series of Ordnance Survey maps for Great Britain.
Begun in 1840, this is the first comprehensive historic mapping of
England, Scotland and Wales. Added 11 Mar 2009.
- Access to various satellite map sites (Google, MS Live, &c.) via the
convenient front end of Flash Earth.
Added 16 Jun 2007.
- The London Ancestor
site has maps from the 1885 Boundary Commissioners report for all parts
of the British Isles, including
Herefordshire (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1885)
- A most useful set of maps for the whole of England and Wales,
showing parish boundaries, on a one inch to the mile scale, is available on
CD-ROM for a modest price - see:
Kain, R.J.P., Oliver, R.R.,
Historic Maps
of England and Wales: Boundaries before 1850. Available on CD from
History Data Service, UK Data Archive, 17 May 2001. SN: 4348.
- The Old Maps web site
has a wonderful series of 1:10,560 scale historical maps for
the whole of the UK available on-line.
- The
Genmaps site contains a fine collection of Old Maps of the British
Isles for Genealogists and Historians. In particular, see
Old Maps of Herefordshire.
- The above Genmaps Links pages lists
Great Britain - Medieval Maps, which in turn provides several maps
including an intriguing
Ecclesiastical Map of the British Isles in the Middle Ages,
which shows the principal Monasteries, demonstrating some of the
earliest centres of habitation and influence.
- Detailed Maps of the area you may be interested in Herefordshire
are viewable at the
UK Street Map Page.
The site provides a most useful service, with superb address searching
and street map facilities for anywhere in mainland Great Britain.
- Clear, Large Type and Braille Maps. Added 11 Feb 2006.
David Hawgood has produced
Maps of Herefordshire with Braille labels (large print labels) to help people
with visual disabilities, with similar
Tactile and large print Maps for other English counties.
There is an article on David's website,
Production of Tactile maps with Braille labels
explaining how these maps have been produced.
- Two very comprehensive sites featuring Castles and Fortifications -
CastleUK.net, and
The Gatehouse.
Added 3 Sep 2005.
- The Age of Nelson - a
website providing general information about the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic
Wars 1793-1815, and specifically searchable databases of those present at
Trafalgar (and more) and of all Commissioned Naval Officers 1787-1822.
- Names from Musters of the Herefordshire Militia 1781-82
are available for purchase on floppy disk or microfiche through
Family History Indexes
(the link to
Militia Musters is part way down the page).
- Bannister, the Rev. A.T. (Arthur Thomas, 1861-1936)
The place-names of Herefordshire : their origin and
development. Cambridge: Printed for the author
(by J. Clay), 1916.
The above source is now available online, transcribed by Mel Lockie -
Herefordshire Place Names. Added 6 May 2009.
- Coplestone-Crow, Bruce -
Herefordshire place-names.
BAR British series ; 214 : Oxford : B.A.R, 1989.
ISBN/ISSN: 0860546888
- The Newspaper Library at Colindale - my current information (October 2007) is
that the BL is going to close Colindale, transferring its archives to Boston Spa.
Newspapers will be viewable on film only at the British Library, until such time as
their holdings are digitised. See the British Library's
Newspapers Digitisation Project for up-to-date details of research facilities.
Updated 13 Nov 2008.
- Information on
Hereford Newspapers, supplied by the
Herefordshire Family History Society.
- The Hereford Times.
Links to Newspapers' sites are provided not only for the Newspaper
content, but also because they may contain links to other items
or sites of local interest.
- For other English Newspapers see
OnlineNewspapers.com - England.
- A site "dedicated to the Workhouse - its buildings,
its inmates, its staff and administrators, and even its poets..." -
The Workhouse -
created by Peter Higginbotham.
- Information about Workhouses and Poor Law Institutions on the
Rossbret Institutions Website,
which also includes Asylums, Almshouses, Gaols (Prisons), Dispensaries,
Hospitals (Infirmaries), Reformatories (Industrial Schools), and Orphanages,
in many cases listing individual premises.
-
The Regency Collection has a section on Postal History, and
also includes other interesting material relating to the Regency period -
e.g. Turnpike Trusts, Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire, and more.
-
Gareth's Help Page [Archives] has a useful section on
research in the National Library of Wales, where Probate Records
for the Archdeaconry of Brecon are held.
- An index to Probate Records 1700-1858 has been
compiled by Eleanor Harris. This index is not online,
but is searchable for a fee - details on Eleanor's page
on
Herefordshire Family History Research.
- We have begun a collection of pages listing details of
Herefordshire Probate Records.
You are invited to submit abstracts of Wills collected during your
own research, as well as to use the information for locating those
elusive female lines. Please help us in building this collection!
- See also Herefordshire Probate Records
Online for an overview, and links to online collections elsewhere.
- A brief history of
Education in England (3 parts).
- If you are interested in finding out whether your
dearest school friends are also researching their family trees,
check out Friends United,
a site devoted to reuniting old school and college friends.
- Mother Bedford -
"a website devoted primarily to the history of Old-Bedford County,
Pennsylvania during the American Revolutionary War period" -
a fascinating site including items of general historical interest eg:
- Apposite to the time of adding:
The Celebration of Christmas.
- Examples of music our ancestors may have enjoyed:
The Music of the 1770s: a Directory.
-
Gazetteer of Markets and Fairs in England and Wales to 1516 -
The Gazetteer, compiled by Dr Samantha Letters is a catalogue of Markets and Fairs
in Medieval England and Wales. First comprehensive National Survey, with detailed
information about grants of Charters to all Market Towns.
Mentions some names of grantees - eg for Brampton Bryan,
"gr 6 Feb 1252, by K Hen III to Brian de Brampton".
-
Victorian Social History: An Overview - Public Health,
Education, Conditions of Life and Labour.
- Costume
History - from Ancient Babylon through to 1990s - a very comprehensive
site on Fashion and Dress through the ages. Has images to illustrate
what my great*6 aunt Mary OUTRAM might have been wearing on top of her
"second best stays", one of the items she left in her will of 1769
to a young female relative!
- The E 179 Database
(on the National Archives website) contains detailed information about over
26,000 documents relating to the taxation of lay people in England and Wales
between c.1200 and c.1700. These documents are likely to contain many names.
This county is maintained by
Rosemary Lockie with help and information
provided by a number of other volunteers.
[Beginning on 30th June 1998 - created originally by Phil Stringer]
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[Last updated 6 May 2009 - 08:43 by Rosemary Lockie]
