Place:Castle Bromwich, Warwickshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

:the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia Castle Bromwich (pronounced "Castle Bromich") is a suburb of the Birmingham area which since 1974 has been situated within the northern part of the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull in the English county of the West Midlands. It is bordered by the rest of the borough to the southeast, North Warwickshire to the east and northeast; also Shard End to the southwest, Castle Vale, Erdington and Minworth to the north and Hodge Hill to the west – all areas now within City of Birmingham. It constitutes a civil parish which had a population of 11,857 according to the 2001 census, falling to 11,217 at the 2011 census. Castle Bromwich was a civil parish within the Meriden Rural District of Warwickshire until the Local Government Act 1972 came into force in 1974, transferring it into Solihull. In 1861, the population was 613. This rose to just over 1,000 in the 1920s, when half of the original parish area was ceded to the City of Birmingham for the construction of overspill estates. This caused a drop to 678 (almost the 1861 level). Post Second World War estate building in Castle Bromwich increased the population to 4,356 in 1951, 9,205 in 1961 and 15,941 in 1971. The parish was then split into two, resulting in the lower 2001 figures. [edit] History of Governance Until 1894, the village was a hamlet in the large parish of Aston. Castle Bromwich has had historic ties with both Erdington and Water Orton through administration, governance and land ownership while remaining part of Aston Parish. The Local Government Act 1894 created a parish of Castle Bromwich from part of the Aston parish not in either Birmingham or Aston Manor Urban District. It was part of the Castle Bromwich Rural District from 1894 until 1912, when it became part of the Meriden Rural District. For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Castle Bromwich.

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 4, pp 43-47 - Parish: Castle Bromwich. British History Online. University of London (London, 1947).