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- source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
- source: Family History Library Catalog
- the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia
Dunchurch is a civil parish and village on the southwestern outskirts of Rugby in Warwickshire, England. The 2001 UK census recorded a population of 2,842 in the village, increasing to 2,938 at the 2011 UK census.
For centuries Dunchurch was an important staging post on the coaching roads between London and Holyhead (now the A45 road) (classified as B4429 through the village) and Oxford and Leicester (now the A426 road). At one point 40 stagecoaches and the regular mail coach every day would stop at Dunchurch.
The coming of the railways in the 1840s led to a dramatic decline in the coaching trade, and with the development of a major junction at nearby Rugby the importance of Dunchurch rapidly declined. From 1871 until 1964 the village was served by its own railway station on the Rugby to Leamington Spa line.
For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Dunchurch.
Dunchurch was originally an ancient parish in the Knightlow Hundred of Warwickshire, England. It included the township of Thurlaston.
It was made a civil parish in 1866 and in 1894 it became part of the Rugby Rural District. In 1932 it absorbed about a quarter of the parish of Bilton which was abolished at that time. Since 1974 it has been part of the non-metropolitan Rugby District.
A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Dunchurch from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:
- "DUNCHURCH, a village, a parish, and a [registration] sub-district, in Rugby [registration] district, Warwick[shire]. The village stands on the eastern verge of the county, near Dunsmoor, and near the Rugby and Warwick railway, 3¼ miles SSW of Rugby; is a polling-place; and has a post office‡ under Rugby, and fairs on the third Monday of Jan., March, and May, the Monday before 24 June, the third Monday of July and Aug., 15 Sept., 1 Oct., and the third Monday of Nov. The parish includes also the hamlets of Toft and Cawston, and the township of Thurlaston. Acres: 4,846. Real property: £6,445. Population: 1,309. Houses: 318. The property is divided among a few. The parish is a meet for the N. Warwick hounds. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Worcester. Value: £320. Patron: the Bishop of Lichfield. The church belonged to Pipe-well abbey; is partly early English [architectural style], partly perpendicular [architectural style]; includes a fine Norman arch in its western porch; and has a large square tower, much mutilated, yet very beautiful. Boughton's school has £81; Newcombe's alms-houses, £74; and other charities, £185."
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.
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- 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.
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