Place:Ewyas Harold, Herefordshire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Ewyas Harold is a village and civil parish in the Golden Valley in Herefordshire, England, near the border with present-day Monmouthshire, Wales and about halfway between the towns of Abergavenny and Hereford. The population of this civil parish at the 2011 census was 883. It lies on the Dulas brook, and is contiguous with the neighbouring village of Pontrilas.

Ewyas Harold was the single parish in the ancient hundred of the same name.

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

"EWYAS-HAROLD, a parish in the [registration] district and county of Hereford; on an affluent of the river Monnow, 1¼ mile NW of Pontrilas [railway] station, and 11½ SW of Hereford. Post Town: Pontrilas, under Hereford. Acres: 1,838. Real property: £1,895. Population: 407. Houses: 88. The property is much subdivided.

"A castle was built here by King Harold, but has disappeared. A small priory of black monks, a cell to Gloucester abbey, also was founded here about 1100. Ewyas was formerly a lordship, extending to the vale of Honddu beyond the Black mountains. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Hereford. Value: £110. Patron: Bishop of [Gloucester and Bristol]. The church dates from the 14th century, and is tolerable."

Research Tips

• Herefordshire Archive and Records Centre, Fir Tree Lane, Rotherwas, Hereford HR2 6LA is where paper and microfilm copies of all records for Herefordshire are stored. The Archives Centre has a website where the index to the archives (and also the wills catalog) can be searched. One item in the catalog is List of all Herefordshire parish register and bishops transcripts holdings which is a PDF file with information provided in an old version of Excel.

Online sources which may also be helpful:

• GENUKI gives pointers to other archive sources as well as providing some details on each parish in the county. The emphasis here is on ecclesiastical parishes (useful before 1837)
• A listing of all the Registration Districts in England and Wales since their introduction in 1837 and tables of the parishes that were part of each district and the time period covered with detailed notes on changes of parish name, mergers, etc. Do respect the copyright on this material.
• The FamilySearch Wiki for Herefordshire provides a similar but not identical series of webpages to that provided by GENUKI
• A Vision of Britain through Time has a group of pages of statistical facts for almost every parish in the county
• Unfortunately, only one volume on Herefordshire has been published in the Victoria County History series. British History Online have produced a series of Ordnance Survey first edition maps for the county which may be helpful for mid-nineteenth century inquiries
• Ancestry.co.uk lists its collections of Herefordshire genealogical material.
• FindMyPast collections of historical records can be searched for Herefordshire. They have collections of parish records for the pre-1837 period.