Place:Berkswell, Warwickshire, England

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NameBerkswell
Alt namesBerkswellsource: Family History Library Catalog
TypeParish (ancient), Civil parish
Coordinates52.409°N 1.642°W
Located inWarwickshire, England     ( - 1974)
Also located inWest Midlands, England     (1974 - )
See alsoHemlingford Hundred, Warwickshire, Englandhundred in which it was located
Meriden Rural, Warwickshire, Englandrural district in which it was situated 1894-1974
Solihull (metropolitan borough), West Midlands, Englandmetropolitan borough covering the area since 1974
source: Family History Library Catalog
the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Berkswell is a village and civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull, county of West Midlands, England. Before 1974 it was in Warwickshire. Berkswell is in the east of the borough, on the boundary with Coventry, and is about 7 miles (11 km) west of Coventry city centre.

The UK census of 2001 recorded a parish population of 2,843, increasing to 3,139 at the 2011 UK census.

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

"BERKESWELL, or Berkswell, a parish in Meriden [registration] district, Warwick[shire]; on the Birmingham and Stafford railway, 6 miles W of Coventry. It has a station on the railway, and a post office under Coventry. Acres: 5,958. Real property: £10,872. Population: 1,624. Houses: 363. The property is much subdivided. Berkeswell House is the seat of T. Walker, Esq. The living is a rectory, united with the vicarage of Barston, in the diocese of Worcester. Value: £976. Patrons: the Misses Shirreff. The church is Norman. There are a neat endowed school with £50 a year, recent alms-houses with £155, and other charities £45."

Berkswell was originally an ancient parish in the Hemlingford Hundred of Warwickshire, England. It included the chapelry of Barston

It was made a civil parish in 1866 and in 1894 it became part of the Meriden Rural District. Since 1974 it has been part of the Solihull Metropolitan Borough.

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.
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Berkswell. 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.