WARWICKSHIRE
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 uses for categorising
genealogical research material. Below are the available headings for
Warwickshire; 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
on your browser's toolbar to return to this page after reading, as
there is no return link.]
Description in 1887
"WARWICKSHIRE, a county
[Map (above) shows location],
in the west-midlands of England; bounded N. by Staffordshire,
Derbyshire, and Leicestershire, E. by Northamptonshire, S. by
Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire, and W. by Worcestershire; greatest
length, N. and S., 52 miles; greatest breadth, E. and W., 32 miles;
area, 566,271 acres, population 737,339. Warwickshire presents a
pleasant undulating surface of hill and dale, watered by the Avon,
Leam, and Tame. The climate is mild and healthy, and the soil, except
some cold stiff clays on the higher grounds, is fertile. It consists
chiefly of a strong red loam adapted for wheat and beans, or a sandy
loam for barley and turnips. Much land is kept in permanent pasture
for grazing. Formerly the county was thickly wooded (that part N. of
the Avon being called the Forest of Arden), and fine timber is still
abundant. Geologically it mainly belongs to the secondary formation.
A coal field, 16 miles by 3 miles, extends from the neighbourhood of
Coventry to the border of Staffordshire, E. of Tamworth. The
principal minerals are coal, ironstone, limestone, freestone, blue
flagstone, and fire-clay. The manufactures are carried on chiefly at
Birmingham (hardware and silk goods) and Coventry (watches and
ribbons). There are mineral springs at Leamington, Stratford on Avon,
Ilmington, Southam, Willoughby, King's Newnham, &c.; The county
is traversed in all directions by canals and railways." [Bartholomew's
Gazetteer of the British Isles, 1887]
- All Warwickshire 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.
- The Birmingham and Midland Society of Genealogy and Heraldry (BMSGH)
provides comprehensive sources of information for
-
Tracing your Ancestors in Warwickshire (excluding Birmingham)
-
Tracing Your Ancestors in Birmingham.
- Researchers may also find one or more of the
Warwickshire Mailing Lists useful in their research; and Warwickshire
Surnames being researched are listed within Graham Jaunay's
On-line English Names Directory.
-
Warwickshire Ancestors Project
This project is providing a "free-to-view" transcription of the 1891
Warwickshire census returns. It is part of an initiative aimed at
helping make high quality primary (or near-primary) records of
relevance to UK family history conveniently and freely available
online.
The project makes use of specially developed software modules for data
entry, checking, validation and database upload.
Volunteers need a computer and access to a microfiche reader.
Microfiche, software, instructions and lots of advice will be supplied
by the organisers. There is also a dedicated mailing list to
ask questions on and to receive advice about changes or
upgrades to the software
There are two phases. In the first, one volunteer transcribes
a census piece, then uploads it to the county coordinator. In the
second phase, another volunteer checks the transcriptions
against the microfiche using a separate piece of software.
By 7 November 2002, over 120,000 records for Aston and Birmingham
were online. The project was subsequently expanded to cover
north east Warwickshire, including Coventry and Rugby.
This project will help not just ourselves and others who are
researching Warwickshire family history now, but build a
resource that will help future family historians.
Online family historians can participate no matter where they
live. If you believe, as we do, that this information should
be available for free and freely available, then please
contact the coordinator.
Whilst Libraries may have a small amount of original material
they contain mainly published material, including fiche or
microfilm of census.
Original sources, particularly Parish Registers, will
have been deposited at Record Offices. County Record Offices are often
also the Diocesan Record Office, as is the case with Warwickshire. The
Birmingham, Deritend, Edgbaston and Erdington registers are at
Birmingham Central Library, those for Stratford-upon-Avon (or Old
Stratford) are at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and those for some
parishes which are on the county boundary may be found in the
neighbouring County Record Office.
Below is a list of the major repositories.
- Birmingham
Central Library, Chamberlain Square, Birmingham.
-
Birmingham City Archives.
- Coventry Central Library, Local Studies Department,
Smithford Way, Coventry, CV1 1FY.
- The University of Warwick
Modern Records Centre.
- Shakespeare
Birthplace Trust Records Office, Shakespeare Centre, Henley
Street, Stratford upon Avon, CB37 6QW.
- Solihull Central Library, Local Studies Collection, Homer
Road, Solihull, West Midlands, B91 3RG.
- Sutton Coldfield Library, Local Studies Service, 43 Lower
Parade, Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham, B72 1XX.
-
Warwickshire County Library.
- Details of source material available at Warwickshire County Libraries
for Family History and Local Studies
(excluding Birmingham) .
-
Warwickshire County Record Office,
Priory Park, Cape Road, Warwick CV34 4JS.
- Birmingham Diocesan Record Office - Anglican
(see
Birmingham Central Library, the archives, however, are on the
7th floor. Telephone +44 121 303 4217)
- Archbishop's House, Archdiocese of Birmingham Catholic
Repository, St. Chad's Queensway, Birmingham, B4 6EX.
- Coventry Archives, John Sinclair House,
The Canal Basin, Coventry, CV1 4LY.
Website: www.theherbert.org.
-
Worcester County Record Office,
County Hall, Spetchley Road, Worcester, WR5 2NP.
- Lichfield Record Office (formerly Lichfield Joint Record
Office), The Friary, Lichfield, Staffordshire, WS13 6QG.
Telephone: (+44) 1543 510771 (note: Lichfield is where Wills
for much of Warwickshire were likely to have been proved pre 1852)
- Steve Bulman has a wide range of photographs of
Churches of Warwickshire.
- You may also find it worthwhile searching in the GENUKI church database.
Enter the name of the place in which the church is located:
- 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.
- The Society of Genealogists web site has a
list of their holdings of
Parish Register Copies for Warwickshire.
- Information on the location of
Quaker Records in
Warwickshire 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
Warwickshire Registration Districts (1837-1974).
- If you have a GRO reference, you can now order certificates online via the
General Register Office's website
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.
- Nigel Batty-Smith's site of
UK Genealogy Archives - Warwickshire has a description of the county
from The Comprehensive Gazetteer of England and Wales, 1894-5.
- The transcription of the section for Warwickshire 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 SO500120).
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 Warwick.
- Details of
Warwickshire Mailing Lists - part of a much larger collection
of "Genealogy Resources
on the Internet" - pages maintained jointly by John Fuller, with Chris Gaunt.
- Details of facilities for
Genealogical Research in Birmingham.
- The
Midlands Historical Data
project produces searchable facsimile copies of old local history books
and directories of interest to genealogists. It specialises in the three
counties of Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Staffordshire, working
closely with libraries, archives and family history societies in the area.
Digital images are made freely available to participating organisations
to improve public access. Free search index on its web-site to all its books.
- Sally Lloyd has a growing collection of information about Warwickshire
on her site
The Parish Mouse.
- Graham Jaunay's Online
English Names Directory covers this county.
- The
On-line Parish Clerk (OPC) Project aims to encourage volunteers
to collect information relating to parish or parishes of interest, and
make it available online, either by webpage or database. OPCs aim
to transcribe parish records, census and any other local history
information that would be useful to a family historian; however as
it takes time to transcribe and accumulate this material, the
amount of information available will vary.
-
RootsChat Messaging Forum - Warwickshire section.
- The
Warwickshire Look-up Exchange provides details of services available for
Warwickshire.
-
Warwickshire and Birmingham transcriptions and indexes,
including MIs, Census (inc. FreeCEN) and other submitted data.
-
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 10 Mar 2009.
- Chris Phillips has compiled an index to place names mentioned in the titles
of topographical articles in the published volumes of the Victoria County History.
The index is available his
Medieval English Genealogy web site, in the
Victoria County History: Warwickshire section.
- 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.
Added 10 Mar 2009.
- 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.
- Name Index to The
History of Warwickshire by William West (1830), indexed by Ted Wildy.
- Facsimiles and annotated transcriptions of
The Accounts of Thomas Elkington 1758-9,
bailiff to William Holbech of Farnborough Hall. Also
a
Facsimile of the Almanac in which he wrote these accounts,
Rider's British Merlin 1758.
- Information about
Warwickshire Feet of Fines (land conveyances) - on
Chris Phillips
Medieval English Genealogy web site. Added 10 Mar 2009.
- 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 10 Mar 2009.
- Warwickshire
section of Pat Johnson's Family Deeds website, providing full transcripts
of old deeds and documents, the originals of which are for sale to
finance further purchases and transcripts.
-
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.
- 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.
-
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.
- The Workhouse
(by Peter Higginbotham) covering England, Wales, Scotland and
Ireland, with history, locations, pictures, etc.
-
Gazetteer of Markets and Fairs to 1516 was compiled by
Dr Samantha Letters at the Centre for Metropolitan History, and is
organised by county. It includes a brief summary of
the early history of many large and small places, with details of
markets and fairs and the people granted the right to hold them.
This county is maintained by
Rosemary Lockie with help and information
provided by a number of other volunteers.
[Beginning on 9th March 2009 - created originally by Peter Abbott]
© Copyright GENUKI and Contributors 1996-2009, &c.
GENUKI is a registered trade mark of the charitable trust GENUKI, see
About GENUKI as an Organisation
Are you lost in the Genuki hierarchy or arrived here from a Search Engine?
If so, use the up-arrow(s) at the top of the page to go up the hierarchy.
URL of this page: http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/WAR/index.html
[Created by Peter Abbott. Last updated 14 Oct 2009 - 10:14 by Rosemary Lockie]
