Place:Flackwell Heath, Buckinghamshire, England

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Flackwell Heath is a village in the civil parish of Chepping Wycombe on the outskirts of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire England. With an elevation of about , in the Chiltern Hills. It has a population of around 6000.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

The name 'Flackwell' is of dubious origin but may describe the source of a stream which once started in this area. The heath was once covered with cherry orchards, "a place of annual resort and festivity during the cherry season" with many cherry pickers traveling from London for the annual event. This is now commemorated in the name of a pub, the Carrington school emblem and in road names such as Cherrywood Gardens. The area covered by Flackwell Heath was once four villages; Flackwell Heath, North-End Woods, Heath End, and Sedgemoor. However, housing developments, particularly post-1945, meant the four eventually formed one large village: Flackwell Heath. Today, the road names Northern Woods, Sedgmoor Road, Sedgmoor Lane, and Heath End Road are still found in the village, perhaps suggesting that the "original Flackwell Heath" could be defined as being between Green Dragon Lane and Treadaway Road, encompassing Churchill Close, Chapman Lane, Chiltern View, Straight Bit, Links Road, Links Approach, The Fairway, Greenlands, Highlands, Jennings Field, Strathcona Close, Norlands Drive, and The Common. However, this is simply an estimation.

The original villagers were in the main farm workers, but some bargemen and mill workers also lived in the village. In the late 19th century, industrial mill workers became more commonplace in the village, and the first furniture makers and workers began to settle too, with Flackwell Heath's close proximity to High Wycombe – well known for the Chair and Furniture industry.

Research Tips

Registration Offices

Birth, marriage and death certificates can now be ordered online from Buckinghamshire County Council. The full postal address is Buckinghamshire Register Office, County Hall, Walton Street, Aylesbury, HP20 1YU.

The Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies (County Hall, Walton Street, Aylesbury, HP20 1UU) holds

• Church of England and Nonconformist churches including registers of baptism, marriage and burial.
• Around 35,000 wills proved by the Archdeaconry of Buckingham.
• County and District Councils (lists of councillors, minutes of meetings, etc).
• Quarter and Petty Session courts.
• Landed estates of families including the Aubrey-Fletchers, Hampdens, Carringtons and Fremantles.
• Historic maps including OS, tithe and inclosure maps
• A wide range of local history books, some for loan.
• Pamphlets and articles of local history interest.
• Local newspapers
• Computers for access to family history resources like Ancestry and FreeBMD.
• Published material is listed in the Library Catalogue.
• Catalogues to some of our manuscript material is available through Access to Archives, part of The National Archives (TNA). Their database contains catalogues describing archives held locally in England and Wales and dating from the eighth century to the present day.

In Buckinghamshire, as with other counties in England and Wales, the location of offices where Births, Marriages and Deaths were registered has altered with other changes in local government. A list of the location of Registration Offices since civil registration began in 1837 has been prepared by GENUKI (Genealogy: United Kingdom and Ireland). The table also gives details of when each Registration Office was in existence. In the case of Buckinghamshire, the same registration offices were used for the censuses since 1851. Buckinghamshire now only has a central registration office at County Hall in Aylesbury, but there are facilities for registering births, marriages and deaths in specific libraries around the county.

Nineteenth Century Local Administration

English Jurisdictions is a webpage provided by FamilySearch which analyses every ecclesiastical parish in England at the year 1851. It provides, with the aid of outline maps, the date at which parish records and bishops transcripts begin, non-conformist denominations with a chapel within the parish, the names of the jurisdictions in charge: county, civil registration district, probate court, diocese, rural deanery, poor law union, hundred, church province; and links to FamilySearch historical records, FamilySearch Catalog and the FamilySearch Wiki. Two limitations: only England, and at the year 1851.

During the 19th century two bodies, the Poor Law Union and the Sanitary District, had responsibility for governmental functions at a level immediately above that covered by the civil parish. In 1894 these were replace by Rural and Urban Districts. These were elected bodies, responsible for setting local property assessments and taxes as well as for carrying out their specified duties. Thses districts continued in operation until 1974. Urban districts for larger municipalities were called "Municipal Boroughs" and had additional powers and obligations.

Poor Law Unions, established nationally in 1834, combined parishes together for the purpose of providing relief for the needy who had no family support. This led to the building of '"union poorhouses" or "workhouses" funded by all the parishes in the union. The geographical boundaries established for the individual Poor Law Unions were employed again when Registration Districts were formed three years later. In 1875 Sanitary Districts were formed to provide services such as clean water supply, sewage systems, street cleaning, and the clearance of slum housing. These also tended to follow the same geographical boundaries, although there were local alterations caused by changes in population distribution.

Online Historical References

• The Buckinghamshire section of The Victoria History of the Counties of England, in four volumes, is online and provides an extensive history of the county, parish by parish, up to the end of the 19th century. Parishes are arranged in their original "hundreds", a fairly archaic scheme of dividing counties into reasonably sized sections.

• GENUKI for Buckinghamshire provides a lot of material on the county history from a variety of aspects. The maps of the hundreds are reproduced from 19th century publications and show the topology as well as the locations of the various parishes. There is also a schematic map covering the whole county. GENUKI does not contain much information about the 20th century and beyond.

• Local History Online provides a list of local historical organizations. Each of these societies and organizations has its own website.

• The FamilySearch Wiki on Buckinghamshire 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. The data does not cover the post-1974 period.