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- source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
- source: Family History Library Catalog
- the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia
Bedworth is a market town in the Borough of Nuneaton and Bedworth, Warwickshire, England. It is situated between Coventry, 5.5 miles (9 km) to the south, and Nuneaton, 3 miles (5 km) to the north. In the 2001 UK census the town had a population of 32,268. For the 2011 UK census its population was combined with that of Nuneaton and the surrounding area in the Borough of Nuneaton and Bedworth.
Bedworth lies 101 miles (163 km) northwest of London, 19 miles (31 km) east of Birmingham and 15 miles (24 km) north northeast of the county town of Warwick.
Bedworth has six main suburban districts, namely Collycroft, Mount Pleasant, Bedworth Heath, Coalpit Field, Goodyers End and Exhall (near Coventry). Exhall is a generic name for the area surrounding junction 3 of the M6 motorway, comprising parts of both Bedworth and Coventry. Much of what is now considered Exhall within south Bedworth is also referred to as Hayes Green by locals and on older maps of the area.
Originally a small market town with Saxon origins, Bedworth developed into an industrial town in the 18th and 19th centuries, due largely to coal mining and the overspill of ribbon weaving and textile industries from nearby Coventry. The opening of the Coventry Canal in 1769 and later, the railway in 1850 enhanced the town's growth. Bedworth was for many years primarily a coal mining town, but the last colliery was closed in 1994.
Due to its good transport links, and proximity to major cities such as Coventry, Birmingham and Leicester, Bedworth is now growing rapidly as a dormitory town.
From 1894 Bedworth was a civil parish within the Foleshill Rural District. In 1928 Bedworth was incorporated as an urban district in its own right. In 1974 the Bedworth Urban District was merged with the Municipal Borough of Nuneaton to create the Borough of Nuneaton and Bedworth.
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.
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- 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 6, pp 26-30 - Parish: Bedworth. British History Online. University of London (London, 1951).
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