Place:Bucknell, Shropshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Bucknell is a village and civil parish in south Shropshire, England. The village lies on the River Redlake, within 660 yards (600 m) of the River Teme and close to the borders with Wales and Herefordshire. There are parts of the parish in both Herefordshire and Radnorshire (now Powys). It is about 6 miles (9.7 km) east of Knighton in Radnorshire, Wales.

The name is derived from Old English and means "Bucca's hill" or "he-goats' hill".

The earliest of the existing buildings date back to the 17th century. The houses were built in a haphazard fashion near the river with easy access to water. The village depended on water from the river and wells until the 1920s when water was piped into the village from a spring above Chapel Lawn. The houses at the lower end of the village were very susceptible to flooding, and this hazard continued until the ford was walled up in the 1950s.

The Old School House was built in the 16th century: this part being the part of the building next to the river and provided education for those who could pay for it. The school remained until the present one was built in 1865. The Old School House then became a shop and bakers' before becoming a private dwelling. The front part of the building pre-dates the rear by around 200 years making it 13th/14th century. Whilst being restored it was found to have once existed as a ground-floor-only property with evidence of an open fire pit and an opening in the roof to allow the smoke to escape. This pre-dates the inglenook fireplace to the rear and was believed to have been a medieval great hall. The restoration completion date for the private dwelling was 1999. The land upon which the present school was built was given in 1865.

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

"BUCKNELL, a township and a parish in the [registration] district of Knighton; the former in the county of Salop [Shropshire]: the latter partly also in the county of Hereford. The township lies on the river Teme, adjacent to the Knighton railway, 4½ miles ENE of Knighton. It has a station on the railway, and a post office under Leintwardine. Acres: 2,730. Real property: £5,914. Population: 622. Houses: 108. The parish includes also the township of Buckton and Coxall. Acres: 4,160. Real property, with Brampton-Brian and Pedwardine: £10,230. Population: 790. Houses: 139. The property is divided among a few. The living is a vicarage, united with the [perpetual] curacy of Buckton, in the diocese of Hereford. Value: £332. Patron: the Grocers' Company, London. The church is good. Charities, £18."

"Only the township of Buckton-and-Coxall is within Herefordshire, about one quarter of the parish." (Source: The Parish Registers of Herefordshire, J Harnden, 1987, ISBN 0 9512347 0 6)

The parish was located in the Purslow Hundred with portions in the Wigmore Hundred of Hereforshire. From 1894 until 1974 the parish was in the Atcham Rural District of Shropshire. During the 1894-1974 period it was part of the Teme Rural District, the Clun Rural District and the Clun and Bishop's Castle Rural District.

In 1974 rural districts throughout England were abolished and replaced with new non-metropolitan districts which combined the rural districts, urban districts, municipal boroughs and county boroughs that existed within their newly drawn geographical borders. The South Shropshire District, including the former Clun and Bishop's Castle Rural District, existed until 2009 when it was replaced by a unitary authority called the Shropshire District which covered the whole of the county with the exception of The Wrekin District (to the east of Shrewsbury and Atcham Borough) which was formed in 1998.

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.