Wales

Contents & Site Map

Monmouthshire Towns & Parishes

MONMOUTHSHIRE

"The County of MONMOUTH is 80 Miles in Circumference, contains about 340000 Acres, 6 Hundreds, 7 Market Towns & only one Borough [viz. Monmouth the shire town], 137 Parishes & about 6400 Houses. The Air is healthfull & temperate, the soil is hilly and woody, the Valleys fruitfull, yeilding abundance of Corn and Grass, as the Hills doe Cattle, Sheep & Goats, &c. Cheif Commodities are Corn, Cattle, Sheep, and its Rivers particularly the Uske and the Wye, are full of Salmon and Trout." [Emanuel Bowen, Britannia Depicta, 1720]

 

Archives and Libraries

• Monmouthshire - Archives and Libraries - links and information.

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Bibliography

• Hale Family History site - a Monmouthshire book list.

• Monmouthshire - Bibliography - Books of General Interest for Family Historians.

• See also the books on South Wales in the General section of the Glamorgan Book pages of GENUKI.

• Wiles, Eric. Publications of the Caerleon Antiquarian Association, later Monmouthshire and Caerleon Antiquarian Association, now Monmouthshire Antiquarian Association. Monmouthshire Antiquary 13 (1997), p.59-66.

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Biography

• Hale Family History site - Gwent's famous people.

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Cemeteries

• Photos and transcriptions of notable church monuments, provided by the Church Monuments Society.

• Roll of Honour - Monmouthshire - War Memorial Selection.

• A List of Monumental Inscriptions extracted and indexed by David Woolven.

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Census

• Monmouthshire Census - links and information.

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Church History

• Monmouthshire Family History - Mike John's site with a picture gallery of Monmouthshire churches.

• Information relating to and History of The Methodist Church in Wales.

• The Britannia, "America's Gateway to the British Isles" Index of Parish Churches features Newport Cathedral and Tintern Abbey.

• Use the Church in Wales website database to Find a Parish Church in Wales.

• You may also find it worthwhile searching in the GENUKI church database. Enter the name of the place in which the church is located:

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Church Records

• 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.

• Monmouthshire Marriages - Mike John's site with a groom's surname index of Monmouthshire marriages, 1725-1812 - this is currently (4/2004) about 40% complete for the county.

• Monmouthshire Catholic Mission Records - section on Mike John's site.

• The Rowland Family site had a map of the Monmouthshire parishes, with direct links to many Monmouthshire parish records indexes online - or for a straight listing of the parishes concerned go to the Monmouthshire Parish Register Transcriptions site.

• A List of Monmouthshire Transcriptions extracted and indexed by David Woolven.

• The Society of Genealogists web site has a list of their holdings of Parish Register Copies for Monmouthshire.

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Civil Registration

• Brett Langston has provided details of the Monmouthshire Registration Districts 1837-1930. Certificates of birth, death and marriage can be obtained from the Superintendent Registrars at the following District Register Offices:
  • Blaeneau Gwent Register Office
  • Newport Register Office
  • Torfaen Register Office

  Records post-1937 for Monmouthshire are held at the Monmouthshire District Register Office in Abergavenny.

  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 (Superintendant's) Register Office, please note the following:

  1. 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;
     
  2. the General Register Office (GRO) Index references (available via FreeBMD) are of no value;
     
  3. for marriage certificates, the precise place of marriage must be given;
     
  4. 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 own website, and their Certificate Ordering Service for the same price as locally.

  You can obtain a GRO reference in several ways:-

  1. Searching microfilm or fiche at a Library or LDS Family History Centre.
  2. 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.
  3. findmypast.com (formerly 1837online) - images of the complete BMD indexes from the GRO online. Fee payable
  4. The images are also available on Ancestry.co.uk for which a subscription provides access to a wide range of other records.

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Correctional Institutions

• 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.]

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Description and Travel

• 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..."

• Wye Valley & Vale of Usk - visitor's site
• Monmouthshire - on wikipedia
• Monmouthshire & Brecon Canal
• Monmouthshire Railway Society

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Directories

• Kelly's Directory of Monmouthshire1901 - a complete transcript.

• There are many directories published for a range of years, these below are a small selection;
  • Kelly's directory of Monmouthshire and principal towns and places in south Wales. London : Kelly, 1884.
  • Pigot & Co. Directory of Monmouthshire. 1844
  • Slater's (late Pigot & Co.) royal national and commercial directory and topography of the counties of Gloucestershire, Monmouthshire and North and South Wales, and a classified directory of the town of Liverpool. Manchester, London, 1858.

• Leicester University's Digital Library of Historical Directories for England and Wales.

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Emigration and Immigration

• For help finding your ancestors onboard ship - The Ships List - of particular interest are the large number of transcribed passenger lists, and records of some Marriages at Sea.

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Encyclopedias & Dictionaries

• Entry for Monmouthshire, 1911 in a 1911 Edition Encyclopedia. Also includes separate entry for the town of Monmouth - see 'Monmouth (England)' in the index.

• A Dictionary of Genealogy & Archaic Terms, Dick Eastman/Randy Jones.

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Gazetteers

• The section of The National Gazetteer (1868) relating to Monmouthshire - 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 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 Monmouth.

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Genealogy

• The Monmouthshire section of 'Curious Fox' - "The village-by-village contact site for anybody researching family history, genealogy and local history in the UK and Ireland".

• Graham Jaunay's Welsh Names Research Directory covers this county.

• Monmouthshire Family History - Mike John's personal family history site, with lots of surnames and including some Monmouthshire Wills.

• Timeline of genealogically interesting dates by Gareth Hicks.

• Welsh Ancestor List - an all Wales surnames list provided by John Ball on his Welsh Family History Archive website.

• Details of Monmouthshire Mailing Lists, provided by John Fuller - part of a much larger collection of "Genealogy Resources on the Internet" - pages maintained jointly by John Fuller, with Chris Gaunt.

• The Monmouthshire Look-Up Exchange - a list of volunteers who hold reference material relating to Monmouthshire and who are willing to undertake small searches.

• The Monmouthshire GenWeb pages, parts of the Wales GenWeb Project. These are in turn part of the British Isles GenWeb Project, and overall part of the World GenWeb hierarchy.

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Historical Geography

• Geography of South Wales - part of the Coalfield Web Materials site.

• 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.

• 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.

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History

• Website for Welsh Heritage and Culture - Gathering the Jewels.

• A digital library of medieval and modern sources of the history of the British Isles - British History Online. Notable souces include Journals of the House of Commons and House of Lords, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, and the Victoria County History.

• 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. Listed with Gloucestershire are Caerleon, Caerwent, Caldicot, Chepstow, Llanvair-Discoed and Portskewett.

• Hale Family History site - a short history.

• Hale Family History site - links to ancient Gwent history sites.

• BBC Wales site - Monmouthshire - the Historic County. Quote: "Monmouthshire was created in 1536 from the marcher lordships of Newport, Abergavenny, Monmouth, Chepstow, Caerleon and Usk." Updated 9 Sep 2006.

• Nelson, Lynn H - The Normans in South Wales, 1070-1171. Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1966.
• A Gazetteer of Monmouthshire Wellsites

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Land and Property

• 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.

• 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.

• 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 Monmouthshire.

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Language and Languages

• Sounds of Wales - John Ball provides a selection of pronunciations of Welsh Place Names as part of his Welsh Family History Archive website.

• The BBC's Learn Welsh course is highly recommended.

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Law and Legislation

• The Equity/Chancery Court Pleadings Database (on the Public Record Office's website) provides an online index to some of the Chancery Pleadings in series C6. Searches can be made by both name and place.

• Names from Criminal Registers (PRO Class HO 27) 1805-1816 are available for purchase on floppy disk or microfiche through Family History Indexes (the link to Criminal Register Indexes is part way down the page).

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Maps

• Access to various satellite map sites (Google, MS Live, &c.) via the convenient front end of Flash Earth.

• The London Ancestor site has maps from the 1885 Boundary Commissioners report for all parts of the British Isles, including Monmouthshire (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

  Kain, R.J.P., Oliver, R.R., Historic Maps of England and Wales: Boundaries before 1850. Colchester, Essex: History Data Service, UK Data Archive [distributor], 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 Monmouthshire.

• 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 Monmouthshire 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.

• The Rowland Family site has a map of the Monmouthshire parishes.

• Hale Family History site - 1907 map of Monmouthshire.

• Welsh county maps by Samuel Lewis and published in 1833.

• Clear, Large Type and Braille Maps.

• David Hawgood has produced Maps of Monmouthshire with Braille labels (large print labels) to help people with visual disabilities, with similar Tactile and large print Maps for other English counties. [NB David's source, Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of England 1835 includes Monmouthshire]
• There is an article on David's website, Production of Tactile maps with Braille labels explaining how these maps have been produced.

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Medical Records

• 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.

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Merchant Marine

• Welsh Mariners by Dr Reg Davies - includes a searchable database of over 17,000 Welsh born (or Wales resident) Master mariners, mates and engineers who held certificates of competency or service; in practice it is an index of men active from 1850 to 1945 in the merchant navy.

• Lighthouse Personnel in England and Wales and the Channel Islands 1841-1910. Includes:- Table of Keepers; Table of Stations by county; Location map of the lighthouse sites.

• Maritime History. Although not particularly Glamorgan related here are a large number of links to websites dealing with maritime history. By Bob Sanders.

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Military History

• Two very comprehensive sites featuring Castles and Fortifications - CastleUK.net, and The Gatehouse.

• Information about Castles in Monmouthshire may also be found on the Castle Wales website.

• 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 Monmouthshire 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 Royal Regiment of Wales was formed in 1969 by the amalgamation of two of Wales' most famous and distinguished regiments, namely The South Wales Borderers (24th Foot) and The Welch Regiment (41st/69th Foot).

• See also Museum Collection.

• The Monmouthshire Regiment in 1914-18.
• 1st Battalion, The Monmouthshire Regiment 1914-18
• 2nd Battalion, The Monmouthshire Regiment
• 3rd Battalion, The Monmouthshire Regiment 1914-16
• 43rd Monmouthshire Light Infantry (1803-1815)
• Royal Monmouthshire Regiment - on the Gathering the Jewels site

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Names, Geographical

• John Ball is providing a Glossary of Welsh Place-Name Elements as part of his Welsh Family History Archive website.

• Hale Family History site - Monmouthshire place names and their meanings

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Names, Personal

• Graham Jaunay's Welsh Names Research Directory covers this county.

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Newspapers

• The Cambrian Index online. The Cambrian was the first English-language newspaper published in Wales and editions cover 1804-1930. Swansea Library provide a searchable index to articles. Added 24 Oct 2005.

• 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.

• South Wales Argus.

  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.

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Occupations

• The Worshipful Company of Curriers - information about the history of this trade.

• The Virtual Waterways Archive - "Hundreds of years of British waterway history brought together in one online catalogue".

• Victorian Professional Photographers in Wales 1850-1925 - compiled by Mari Alderman; includes sources and a bibliography.

• Coalfield Web Materials. University of Wales, Swansea. ".......... aims to improve lifelong learning opportunities by stimulating in the local history and cultural heritage of South Wales. It offers digital versions of original documentary and audiovisual material relating to the history and development of the South Wales Coalfield......" Here are direct links to sections of the site;
  • Pay and Living
  • Life Underground
  • Migration to the South Wales Coalfield
  • Coal owners
  • Economy/Development of the Coal Industry
  • Miners' Strikes, 1972 & 1974
  • Miners' Strikes, 1984-5
  • The South Wales Miners' Federation
  • The National Union of Mineworkers
  • Hunger Marches (1927- 1936)
  • Background to the 1926 General Strike
  • Women in the Mines
  • Coalfield People

• Miners' Strikes, 1972, 1974 & 1984 - a NLW site.

• The Miners' Next Step and the General Strike of 1926 .... "The Great Unrest is the term used to describe the years between 1908 and 1914 when Wales, and indeed Britain, saw many industrial conflicts such as the Cambrian Combine Strike, the Tonypandy Riots as well as a number of Suffragette protests."

• Welsh Coal Mines.

• Railway companies which operated in Carmarthenshire, Glamorgan & Monmouthshire plus some in adjoining areas which ran into the former counties. By Bob Sanders.

• Ian Winstanley's Coal Mining History Resource Centre Probably the most comprehensive source for mining deaths - some 65,000 names of people who died or suffered injury in the mines of Great Britain from 1850 to 1909.

• Miners' Advice site. The Collieries of Wales section includes features/photographs relating to the following mines; Abertysswg - Bargoed - Bersham - Big Pit - Britannia - Celynen - Cwmtillery - Deep Navigation-Elliots - Ferndale - Groesfaen - Llanbradach - Mardy - Marine - Markham - Nantgarw - Navigation - Oakdale - Ogilvie - Old Pit - Penalta - Pochin - Point of Ayr - Senghenydd-Six Bells - Taff Merthyr - Tower.

• Infomation about the South Wales Coalfield Collection can be found at the S.W.C.C website.

• Monmouthshire Brecon and Abergavenny Canal Trust.

• The Restoration of the Severn Princess site looks at the efforts to restore the last Severn Ferry which plied between Aust, just north of Bristol, and Beachley, near Chepstow - working daily until the opening of the Severn Road Bridge. Unfortunately it is no longer available offline, but archived versions exist - thanks to the Wayback Machine - see Archived version of www.severnprincess.co.uk, and click on one of the listed dates. Note: these pages are well worth a visit, but as the link is to archived versions, some internal links may no longer work.

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Politics and Government

• Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council.

• Monmouthshire County Council.

• Newport City Council.

• Torfaen County Borough Council.

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Poorhouses, Poor Law, etc.

• 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.

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Postal and Shipping Guides

• 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.

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Probate Records

• Monmouthshire wills : proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury 1560-1601. Cardiff : South Wales Record Society, 1997. 256p.

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Religion and Religious Life

• The General Commission on Archives and History (GCAH) of the United Methodist Church has a list of John Wesley's Preachers, 1740-1791.

• John Blaylock provides Definitions of (Ecclesiastical) Words and Phrases used in his account of the History of Boulton St Mary's Parish Church (Derbyshire) - for example 'Advowson' , 'Curate', 'Rector', 'Tithes', &c.

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Schools

• A History of Education in Wales (book).

• 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.

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Social Life and Customs

• 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:
  1. Apposite to the time of adding: The Celebration of Christmas.
  2. 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!

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Societies

Gwent FHS

South Wales Record Society - "The society was set up in 1982 with the aim of publishing a regular series of books and other works on the history of South Wales and particularly Glamorgan and Gwent."

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Taxation

• 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.

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INDIVIDUAL TOWNS AND PARISHES - See Alphabetical Listing

(Last updated - Gareth Hicks  - 12 Nov 2009)

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