Place:Alcester, Warwickshire, England

Watchers
NameAlcester
TypeParish (ancient), Civil parish
Coordinates52.217°N 1.867°W
Located inWarwickshire, England
See alsoBarlichway Hundred, Warwickshire, Englandhundred in which it was located
Alcester Rural, Warwickshire, Englandrural district in which it was situated 1894-1974
Stratford on Avon District, Warwickshire, Englandnon-metropolitan district covering the area since 1974
source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
source: Family History Library Catalog
the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Alcester is a market town and civil parish of Roman origin at the junction of the River Alne and River Arrow in Warwickshire, England, approximately 8 miles (13 km) west of Stratford-upon-Avon, and 8 miles south of Redditch, close to the Worcestershire border. The 2011 census recorded a population of 6,273.

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Alcester from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:

"ALCESTER, a town, a parish, a [registration] sub-district, and a [registration] district in Warwick[shire].
"The town stands at the confluence of the Alne and the Arrow, and on the Birmingham and Malvern railway, 9 miles NNE of Evesham. The Roman station Alanna stood on its site; and the Roman road, Icknield street, passed through, and may still be traced in the vicinity. Roman pavements, substructions, coins, and urns have been found. The place had great importance in the times of the Saxons, and was a royal residence at the period of the Conquest. A Benedictine Abbey was founded, in 1140, on an island about ½ a mile to the N; but fell into decay, became a cell of Evesham Abbey, and has long disappeared. Alcester was made a borough by Henry I.; and it continued to be of note in the 16th and 17th centuries, but it is now within the jurisdiction of the county magistrates. It consists of one principal street, and some small diverging ones; and presents a clean and neat appearance. The townhall was built in 1641; the corn exchange, in 1857. The parish church, rebuilt in 1732, and retaining the previous tower, is a fine Gothic structure, and contains a well preserved altar-tomb of Sir Fulke Greville and his lady, and a splendid monument of the Marquis of Hertford. There are three dissenting chapels, two public schools, eight alms-houses, and other charities £270. The town has a post office‡ under Redditch, a r. station, a banking office, a weekly market on Tuesday, and fairs on the Tuesday before 29 Jan., on the Tuesday before 25 March, on the third Tuesday of April, May, and Sept., on the second Tuesday of July, on 17 Oct., and on the first Tuesday of Dec. The manufacture of needles and fish hooks is carried on. Population: not separately returned. The railway past Alcester was partly projected in 1861, but not all opened till 1868.
"The parish of Alcester comprises 1,530 acres. Real property: £8,920. Population: 2,128. Houses: 491. The manor belongs to the Marquis of Hertford; whose seat, Ragley Park, is about 2 miles SW of the town. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Worcester. Value: £259. Patron: the Marquis of Hertford."
[Details of the registration district and the sub-registration district are omitted.]

Research Tips

  • GENUKI main page for Warwickshire provides information on various topics covering the whole of the county, and also a link to a list of parishes. Under each parish there is a list of the settlements within it and brief description of each. This is a list of pre-1834 ancient or ecclesiastical parishes but there are suggestions as to how to find parishes set up since then. GENUKI provides references to other organizations who hold genealogical information for the local area. There is no guarantee that the website has been kept up to date and therefore the reader should check additional sources if possible.
  • Warwickshire and West Midland family history societies are listed in GENUKI.
  • The FamilyTree Wiki has a series of pages similar to those provided by GENUKI which may have been prepared at a later date and from more recent data. The wiki has a link to English Jurisdictions 1851. There is a list of all the parishes in existence at that date with maps indicating their boundaries. The website is very useful for finding the ecclesiastical individual parishes within large cities and towns.
  • A Vision of Britain through Time, Warwickshire, section "Units and Statistics" leads to analyses of population and organization of the county from about 1800 through 1974. There are pages available for all civil parishes, municipal boroughs and other administrative divisions. Descriptions provided are usually based on a gazetteer of 1870-72 which often provides brief notes on the economic basis of the settlement and significant occurences through its history.
  • The two maps below indicate the boundaries between parishes, etc., but for a more detailed view of a specific area try a map from this selection. The oldest series are very clear at the third magnification offered. Comparing the map details with the GENUKI details for the same area is well worthwhile.
  • A map of the ancient divisions named "hundreds" is to be found in A Vision of Britain through Time. It shows the detached sections of Warwickshire as they were in 1832. These detached sections have now been moved into the counties that surrounded them.
  • As of October 2016 Warwickshire Parish Registers, 1535-1984 are available to search online on FamilySearch
  • As of September 2018 TheGenealogist has added over 1.5 million individuals to its Warwickshire Parish Record Collection and so increases the coverage of this Midland county for family researchers to find their ancestors baptisms, marriages and burials. These records are released in association with Warwickshire County Record Office and have the benefit of high quality images to complement the transcripts, making them a valuable resource for those with ancestors from this area. These are available to Genealogist Diamond Subscription holders.
  • The website British History Online provides seven volumes of the Victoria County History Series on Warwickshire. The first (Vol 2) covers the religious houses of the county; Volumes 3 through 6 provide articles the settlements in each of the hundreds in turn, and Volumes 7 and 8 deal with Birmingham and Coventry respectively. References to individual parishes will be furnished as time permits.
  • Victoria County History - Warwickshire - Vol 3, pp 8-22 - Parish: Alcester. (London, 1945) British History Online. University of London.
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Alcester. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.