Place:Coventry St. Michael, Warwickshire, England

Watchers
NameCoventry St. Michael
Alt namesCoventry St. Michael Withinsource: civil parish existing 1894-1900 within Coventry
Coventry St. Michael Withoutsource: civil parish existing 1894-1928 within Coventry Rural District
Whitleysource: hamlet in Coventry St. Michael Without
TypeParish (ancient), Civil parish
Coordinates52.393°N 1.494°W
Located inWarwickshire, England     ( - 1974)
Also located inWest Midlands, England     (1974 - )
See alsoKnightlow Hundred, Warwickshire, Englandhundred in which it was located
Coventry, Warwickshire, Englandcounty borough into which it was absorbed in 1894
Coventry Rural, Warwickshire, Englandrural district in which part of Coventry St. Michael was located 1894-1928
Coventry (metropolitan borough), West Midlands, Englandmetropolitan borough covering the area since 1974

Coventry St. Michael was the cathedral church of Coventry that was bombed by the Luftwaffe in 1940. It was originally built in the 14th century and was an ancient parish in the Knightlow Hundred.

During the 19th century and early 20th century it also acted as a civil parish responsible for the registering of births, marriages and deaths.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Coventry Cathedral.

Coventry St. Michael was recognised as a civil parish during the period 1835-1894. In 1894 it was split into two civil parishes named Coventry St. Michael Within and Coventry St. Michael Without. Coventry St. Michael Within was within the County Borough of Coventry and Coventry St. Michael Without was in Coventry Rural District to the south of the city. The former was absorbed completely into Coventry in 1900, while Coventry St. Michael Without remained a separate entity until 1928 when Coventry Rural District was abolished.

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.
  • Victoria County History - Warwickshire - Vol 8, pp 1-23 - Parish: Coventry. British History Online. University of London (London, 1969). This is the first of a large number of chapters on Coventry. There will be many mentions of both churches and their parishes.
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Coventry Cathedral. 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.