Place:Binley Woods, Warwickshire, England

This area between Coventry and Rugby in Warwickshire, England has become much more densely populated over the 20th century. Source material has been difficult to obtain. Around 1900 there was a parish on the southeast borders of Coventry named Binley, in Foleshill Rural District. In 1932 Coventry expanded its borders and absorbed almost 800 acres of Binley's original 2,500. The part which Coventry absorbed became Binley and the remaining part of what had been Binley parish became Binley Woods.

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

Binley Woods is a village and civil parish in the Rugby Borough of Warwickshire, England. The village lies inside the built-up area of Coventry but falls outside the formal city boundaries. In the 2011 UK census the parish had a population of 2,665.

The village is located 5 miles (8 km) to the east of central Coventry, on the A428 road, next to the junction with the A46 road, the present boundary between Coventry Metropolitan Borough and Rugby Borough. The village of Brandon lies 1.5 miles (2.5 km) to the east.

Binley Woods is a relatively modern village. Settlement began in the 1920s, when some of the estates of Coombe Abbey in the neighbouring parish of Combe Fields were sold off and people began to settle in the area. During the 1940s many homeless people from bombed-out Coventry lived in Binley, often living in shacks and caravans.

The village adopted its current name in the late 1950s, when the name Binley Woods was chosen to avoid confusion with nearby Binley, a suburb southeast of Coventry. A village church was established in Binley Woods in 1987.

NOTE: This material has been sourced from the two historical Ordnance Survey maps listed below, A Vision of Britain through Time, and Google Earth.

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.

• Map of Warwickshire 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.
• Map of Warwickshire 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. 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: Binley. British History Online. University of London (London, 1951).