Place:Bulkington, Warwickshire, England

Watchers
NameBulkington
Alt namesBramcottsource: hamlet in parish
Bramcotesource: spelling variation
Marston Jabbettsource: hamlet in parish
Weston in Ardensource: hamlet in parish
TypeParish (ancient), Civil parish, Urban district
Coordinates52.477°N 1.427°W
Located inWarwickshire, England
See alsoKnightlow Hundred, Warwickshire, Englandhundred in which it was located
Rugby Rural, Warwickshire, Englandrural district in which it was located 1932-1938
Bedworth, Warwickshire, Englandurban district into which it was absorbed in 1938
Nuneaton and Bedworth District, Warwickshire, Englandnon-metropolitan district covering the area since 1974
source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
source: Family History Library Catalog


the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Bulkington is a large village and former civil parish in the Nuneaton and Bedworth district of Warwickshire, England. In the 2011 census the ward had a population of 6,146 and 6,303 in the 2001 census. It is located around northeast of Coventry, just east of the towns of Nuneaton and Bedworth and southwest of Hinckley. Despite historically having stronger links with Bedworth, Bulkington forms part of the Nuneaton Urban Area. Bulkington was mentioned in the Domesday Book as Bochintone, meaning "estate associated with a man called Bulca".

The parish originally contained seven hamlets, two of which were subsumed by Bulkington village following residential building expansion which began in the 1930s.

Historically the main industry in Bulkington was ribbon weaving. Today Bulkington is largely a commuter village for larger nearby urban centres such as Coventry, Nuneaton, Bedworth, Hinckley and Leicester.

Bulkington has connections with the locally born author George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), who knew the village well. She is thought to have referred to it as Raveloe in her book Silas Marner (1861). The church of St James is where George Eliot's uncle and aunt are buried.

History

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

Throughout the medieval period and until the late 18th century, the principal employment in Bulkington had been agriculture: 100 acres (0.40 km2) of meadowland were recorded in 1086; further, windmills are recorded for Weston and Marston Jabbett, and a water mill in Bramcote. However, in 1766 700 acres (2.8 km2) of common land were enclosed at [[Place:Ryton on ]Dunsmore, Warwickshire, England|Ryton on ]Dunsmore], and 4 years later enclosure was applied to the remainder of land in Bulkington, totalling 1,600 acres (6.5 km2).[7]

Because of this, ribbon weaving supplemented or replaced agriculture as the main source of income for the majority of Bulkington's population. This cottage industry had spread to Bulkington from the major centres of Coventry and Bedworth, where it had been introduced by the Huguenots in the 18th century. The late 18th century and early 19th century was a period of significant growth for the village, with its population almost tripling in size.

The 1830s saw a slump in the industry, due in part to the introduction of factory production at Coventry, and competition from cheap imports. However, the 1840s brought another period of growth when many buildings were re-fronted or rebuilt in chequered brick work (characteristic of buildings of the period in the northern part of Warwickshire).

The industry collapsed in the 1860s "when the Cobden treaty with France removed the duty on French silks entering England". This was accompanied by a depression in agriculture and led to a fall in the population by almost a third by 1891.

Nonetheless, ribbon production continued in Bulkington into the middle of the 20th century, though through small factory production rather than as a cottage industry. The last factory, in Arden Road, closed in the early 1950s.

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

"BULKINGTON, a village and a parish in Nuneaton [registration] district, Warwick[shire]. The village stands near the Coventry canal and the Trent Valley railway, 4 miles SE by S of Nuneaton; and has a station on the railway, and a post office under Rugby. The parish includes also the hamlets of Marston-Jabbett, Ryton [on Dunsmore], Weston-in-Arden, Wolvershill [Wolvey], and parts of Barnacle and Bramcott. Acres: 4,510. Real property: £9,358. Population: 1,858. Houses: 450. The property is much subdivided. Many of the inhabitants are ribbon-weavers. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Worcester. Value: £253. Patron: the Lord Chancellor. The church is good; and there are three dissenting chapels, fine Church schools built in 1862, and charities £68."

Bulkington was originally an ancient parish in the Knightlow Hundred of Warwickshire, England. It included the chapelries of Ansty, Ryton on Dunsmore and Shilton (which included Barnacle.

It was made a civil parish in 1866 and in 1894 it became an urban district. In 1932 the urban district was abolished and for the next 6 years Bulkington was part of Rugby Rural District. In 1938 it became part of Bedworth Urban District. Also in 1938 it was reduced in size from about 4,500 acres when transfers were made to the parishes of Shilton (527 acres) and Wolvey (1,191 acres). Since 1974 it has been part of the non-metropolitan Nuneaton and Bedworth District.

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 Bulkington. 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.