SHROPSHIRE
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
Shropshire; but see
How the information on this server is presented to the user for
further details, and an overall list. [Hint: Press the "Back" arrow
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Description in 1842/1852
"An English county
[Map (above) shows location],
44 miles in length, and 28 in breadth; bounded by Cheshire, Denbighshire, Montgomeryshire,
Herefordshire, and Staffordshire *.
It contains 170 parishes, and 16 market
towns. The principal rivers are, the Severn, which runs through the midst of
the county, the Terne, the Clun, and the Rhea, with several other small
streams. The west and south parts are mountainous, some points being nearly
2000 feet high, and several surpassing 1000; but the east and north more plain
and level; however, the soil is pretty fertile everywhere, yielding corn and
pastures, besides coal, iron, and other commodities. The air is sharp on the
tops of the hills and mountains, but in the lower parts tolerable enough. The
great branches of manufacturing industry carried on here are all kinds of
ironworks, woollens, and china, earthenware, &c. Shrewsbury is the capital.
Population, 239,048. It sends 11 members to parliament".
[Barclays Complete & Universal English Dictionary, 1842-1852]
* Note: This is inaccurate -
in the years up to 1974, Shropshire bordered Worcestershire, Radnorshire and
Flintshire in addition to the counties mentioned above.
- All Shropshire 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 Shropshire pages.
- Researchers may find one or more of the
Shropshire Mailing Lists useful in their research; and Shropshire
Surnames are listed within Graham Jaunay's
On-line English Names Directory.
- FreeCEN is an ongoing volunteer-based project
to provide a 'free to view' online searchable database of the 19th century UK census returns.
Volunteers are being sought to assist with transcribing - visit the
FreeCen Project page to see each
county's status as well as a FAQ for volunteers.
- A list of the major items (including external links) in the Shropshire section of
GENUKI is provided on a separate page of Quick Links.
- Salter, Mike - The Old Parish Churches of Shropshire. 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.
- The Shropshire FHS website
advertises a variety of Local Interest Publications.
- The Britannia, "America's Gateway to the British Isles"
Index of Parish Churches features Shrewsbury Abbey Church -
"Home of St. Winifred & Brother Cadfael".
- You may also find it worthwhile searching in the GENUKI church database.
Enter the name of the place in which the church is located:
- Brett Langston has provided details of the
Shropshire Registration Districts 1837-1930.
Certificates of birth, death and marriage can be obtained from the Superintendent
Registrars at the following District Register Offices:
Note: Certificates of birth, death and marriage can be obtained
locally only from the Register Office for the District in which they were
issued - or if the District no longer exists, the Office to which
its registers have been moved.
If ordering from a District 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 (formerly available at St Catherine's House) 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.
- If you have a GRO reference, you can now order certificates online via
the General Register Office's 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.]
- The Geograph British Isles project -
"aims to collect geographically representative photographs and information
for every square kilometre of the UK and the Republic of Ireland..."
Added 16 Jun 2007.
-
- Nigel Batty-Smith's site providing
UK Genealogy Archives of Shropshire has a description of the county
from The Comprehensive Gazetteer of England and Wales, 1894-5.
- The section of The National Gazetteer (1868) relating
to Shropshire - transcribed 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 SJ490120).
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 Shrewsbury.
-
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.
- Shropshire Hundreds -
provided by Michael J Hulme/Alan Stanier.
- Parishes on the County Borders, which may
cause difficulty - provided by Michael J Hulme/Alan Stanier.
- British History Online -
digital library of medieval and modern sources of the history of the British Isles.
Notable souces include Journals of the House of Commons and House of
Lords, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, and the Victoria County History.
Added 14 Oct 2005.
- 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
site - "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.
Land and Property
- Some abstracts of
Shropshire Feet of Fines (land conveyances) of various dates - on
Chris Phillips
Medieval English Genealogy web site. Added 22 May 2007.
- The Harvard Law School Library's
English Deeds Collection contains detailed summaries of some Deeds relating to
Shropshire. The site 'Search' for 'shropshire' and 'salop' may be expected to return six entries.
Added 27 Apr 2006.
- 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 Oct 2004. Updated 19 Sep 2007.
- 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
Shropshire.
- 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
Shropshire (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 Shropshire.
- 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 Shropshire
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 Shropshire 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.
- Medical Heritage of Great Britain,
a site produced by the Bath & Wessex Medical History Group,
providing detailed information on a county level of the history of medical
treatments, and locations of some associated buildings.
- 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 Shropshire 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).
- 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
British Library Newspapers for up-to-date details of research facilities.
Updated 23 Oct 2007.
- For other English Newspapers see
OnlineNewspapers.com - England.
- The Workhouse
a site "dedicated to the workhouse - its buildings,
its inmates, its staff and administrators, and even its poets..."
created by Peter Higginbotham - promises to be a rich source of reference.
- The Rossbret Web site
provides extensive information about Workhouses and Poor Law Institutions,
but also includes Asylums, Almshouses, Gaols (Prisons), Dispensaries,
Hospitals (Infirmaries), Reformatories (Industrial Schools), and Orphanages,
in many cases listing individual premises.
- GENUKI's own list -
Shropshire Poor Law Unions - is provided by Michael J Hulme/Alan Stanier.
- 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.
-
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 11th June 2004. Page created by Alan Stanier and updated 23 May 2004 - David Hawgood]
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URL of this page: http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/SAL/index.html
[Adopted 11 Jun 2004. Last updated 15 Aug 2008 - 18:38 by Rosemary Lockie]
