Place:Charlton Hundred, Berkshire, England

Watchers


NameCharlton Hundred
TypeHundred
Located inBerkshire, England

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

"CHARLTON, a hundred in Berks. It marches with Hants, at the Blackwater river; is 7 miles long; and contains Barkham and Finchampstead parishes, and parts of three others. Acres: 18,840. Population: 3,202. Houses: 660."

Charlton Hundred contains what are now the southern suburbs of Reading and the more rural area down to the border with Hampshire.

A map of the Berkshire Hundreds in 1832 from the Ordnance Survey as provided by A Vision of Britain through Time.

List of Parishes

ParishDescriptionNotes
Barkham ancient parish, civil parish
Broad Hinton parochial liberty, civil parish began 1866
Earley parochial liberty, civil parish
Finchampstead ancient parish, civil parish
St. Nicholas Hurst chapelry, civil parish also known as Hurst
Shinfield ancient parish, civil parish
Sonning ancient parish, civil parish
Swallowfield chapelry, civil parish
Whistley in Hurst parochial liberty, civil parish ended 1894

Research Tips

Maps

  • GENUKI's collection of maps for Berkshire. For basic reference are the two online maps Berkshire Parishes (highly recommended) and Berkshire Poor Law Union areas. These locate the individual parishes and indicate the urban and rural districts to which each belonged. There are many other maps listed, some covering specific parts of the county.
  • Wikipedia's outline map of the unitary authorities, shown on many of their Berkshire pages, shows how the new divisions of government relate to the former districts. It has to be remembered that the county was reshaped in 1974 with the urban and rural districts of Abingdon and Faringdon and part of Wantage going to Oxfordshire, and the Borough of Slough (with Eton) coming in from Buckinghamshire. Every attempt is being made to indicate here in WeRelate the civil parishes, towns and villages for which these transfers occurred. Currently there are maps to be found on place pages that deal with civil parishes that transferred from Buckinghamshire into Berkshire. It is planned to provide maps within WeRelate for places that transferred from Berkshire to Oxfordshire--a much wider geographical area.
  • The extensive collection provided by Genmaps is provided free of charge online (currently offline, March 2016).
  • The Ordnance Survey has produced an up-to-date map of the boundaries of all the post-1974 districts throughout the country. This also shows the electoral constituency boundaries which are destined to change before 2020.

Online Historical References

  • Berkshire Record Office. The Berkshire Record Office [BRO] was established in 1948 to locate and preserve records relating to the county of Berkshire and its people, and anyone who is interested in the county's past. As well as original documents, catalogues and indexes, there is a library at the Record Office.
  • Berkshire Family History Society Research Centre. "The Berks FHS Centre can help you - wherever your ancestors came from. There is a Research Centre Library open to all."
  • West Berkshire Museum, Newbury, is housed in a building with an interesting past, but is currently closed for redevelopment. No information on their collections.
  • The GENUKI provision for Berkshire has been updated more recently than that for some of the other counties. A member of the Berkshire Family History Society is credited with this revision.
  • The FamilySearch Wiki on Berkshire explains the jurisdictions relating to civil affairs, parishes and probate (wills and testaments) for each parish in the county and also outlines when these jurisdictions were in existence. Alterations required to cover the post-1974 period have not been carried out for every parish concerned.
  • Brett Langston's list of Registration Districts in Berkshire will lead to specific parishes with dates.
  • Local History Online is a compilation of websites from Berkshire local history clubs, societies and associations.
  • The Berkshire section of The Victoria History of the Counties of England, in four volumes, is provided by British History Online. Volumes 3 and 4 provide an extensive history of the county, parish by parish, up to the end of the 19th century. There are local maps illustrating the text. Manors and their owners are discussed. Parishes are arranged in their original "hundreds"; the hundred for each placename in the Berkshire section of WeRelate will eventually be available.