Place:Battlefield, Shropshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Battlefield is a village 3 miles (5 km) north of Shrewsbury town centre in Shropshire, England. The village is today split between three civil parishes - Shrewsbury, Astley and Pimhill. However, it was a civil parish until 1934.

The A49 road runs through Battlefield, on its way from Shrewsbury to Whitchurch, as does the Welsh Marches Line (the Shrewsbury to Crewe railway line). The A53 road begins its route at Battlefield.

Battlefield is as an electoral ward of Shrewsbury Town Council and also of Shropshire Council. The population of this ward at the 2011 UK census was 4,193.

Battlefield was only an extra parochial area until the Dissolution of the Monasteries circa 1535. It then became an ancient or ecclesiastical parish. It was made a civil parish in 1866 and continued as such until 1934. From 1894 until 1934 it was part of the Atcham Rural District. In 1934 it was abolished and split between the parishes of Albrighton (near Shrewsbury) which received 942 acres and a population of 100 and Shrewsbury itself which received 83 acres and a population of 104. The parish of Albrighton (near Shrewsbury) was split in 1967 between the newly formed parish of Pimhill and the parish of Astley.

Battle of Shrewsbury

It was roughly here that the Battle of Shrewsbury of 1403 took place. A church, commonly known as "Battlefield Church", but dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene Church, was built in memory of the thousands who died.

The battle was fought on 21 July 1403, waged between an army led by the Lancastrian King Henry IV and a rebel army led by Henry "Harry Hotspur" Percy from Northumberland. The battle, the first in which English archers fought each other on English soil, demonstrated the effectiveness of the longbow and ended the Percy challenge to King Henry IV of England. There is a description of the battle and the reasons it occurred in Wikipedia.

Genealogical notes for both Henry IV of England and Sir Henry 'Hotspur' Percy are to be found in WeRelate.

Research Tips

• The historical short form for Shropshire was "Salop". This is quite often found in archive material.
• Shropshire Archives, Castle Gates, Shrewsbury SY1 2AQ
• Shropshire Family History Society.
• The GENUKI main page for Shropshire provides information on various topics covering the whole of the county, and there is 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 also provides transcriptions of parish registers for numerous parishes throughout Shropshire. These will be noted at the bottom of this list as time permits for the parishes involved. Each register is preceded by historical notes from the editor-transciber and other details than simply births, marriages and deaths that have been found in the individual books from the parishes. These registers probably only go up to 1812 when the proscribed style for registers across the country was altered.
• GENUKI lists under each parish further references to other organizations who hold genealogical information for the local area. (URLs for these other websites may not be up to date.)
• 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 in 1851 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, Shropshire, section "Units and Statistics" leads to analyses of population and organization of the county from about 1800 through 1974. There are similar pages available for all civil parishes, municipal boroughs and other administrative divisions that existed pre-1974. 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.

• Map of Shropshire illustrating urban and rural districts in 1900 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time. Parish boundaries and settlements within parishes are shown. (Unfortunately the online copy of this map has pencil codings in each parish which make it difficult to see the orignal.)
• Map of Shropshire urban and rural districts in 1944 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time. Parish boundaries and settlements within parishes are shown. This is not a repeat of the first map. There were a number of changes to urban and rural district structure in the 1930s.

• A map of the ancient divisions named "hundreds" is to be found in A Vision of Britain through Time. Some of the hundreds were broken into separate sections with other hundreds in between.
• The website British History Online provides four volumes of the Victoria County History Series on Shropshire. Volume 2 covers the religious houses of the county; Volume 4 provides a history of agriculture across the county, and Volumes 10 and 11 deal with Munslow Hundred, the Borough of Wenlock and the Telford area (i.e., the northeastern part of the county). The rest of the county is not presently covered. References to individual parishes will be furnished as time permits.
• A transcription of the Battlefield parish registers is online and is provided through the auspices of GENUKI.