Place:Hail Weston, Huntingdonshire, England

Until 1965 Hail Weston was located in the County of Huntingdonshire. After mergers in 1965 and 1974 the county became part of Cambridgeshire. It was part of the St Neots Rural District from 1894 until 1974 and is now in the Huntingdonshire administrative district of Cambridgeshire. the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia Hail Weston is located a few miles southwest of the town of St. Neots. The B645 road passes by the southern edge of the village, linking it with Eaton Socon and the A1 trunk road to the south and Kimbolton to the west. Other nearby settlements include the villages of Little Paxton, Great Staughton, Little Staughton, and Southoe. The following description from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72 is provided by the website A Vision of Britain Through Time (University of Portsmouth Department of Geography). "HAIL-WESTON, a village and a parish in St. Neots [registration] district, Huntingdon[shire]. The village stands near the river Kym, and near the boundary with Bed[fordshire], 2½ miles NW of St. Neots [railway] station; and has a post office under St. Neots. The parish comprises 1,553 acres. Real property: £3,154. Population: 440. Houses: 94. The property is divided among a few. The manor belongs to R. A. Reynolds, Esq. The living is a vicarage, annexed to the vicarage of Southoe, in the diocese of Ely. The church was reported in 1859 as very bad. There are a Baptist chapel and a national school." Hail Weston was a chapelry in the ancient parish of Southoe until it became a civil parish in 1866. Parish register entries for Hail Weston are likely to be under Southoe.

Research Tips

• Original historical documents relating to Huntingdonshire are now held by Cambridgeshire Archives and Local Studies at Shire Hall, Ely, Cambridgeshire, CB7 4GS
• The Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire Family History Society has transcribed the parish registers for all the ancient parishes of Huntingdonshire and these can be purchased from the Society as pdfs.
• A History of the County of Huntingdon in 3 volumes from British History Online (Victoria County Histories). This is by far the most complete history of the parishes of the county to be found online. The chapters are ordered by the divisions of the county called hundreds, but each chapter is linked to the volume's content page. Volume 2 (published 1932) covers Hurstingstone and Toseland hundreds (index of parishes); Leightonstone and Norman Cross Hundreds (index of parishes) are found in Volume 3 (published 1936). Volume 1 is a part-volume describing the religious houses of the county.
• GENUKI has a page on Huntingdonshire and pages for each of the ecclesiastical or ancient parishes in the county. These give references to other organizations who hold genealogical information for the local area.
• The FamilyTree Wiki has a series of pages similar to those provided by GENUKI which may have been prepared at a later date.
• A Vision of Britain through Time, 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.
• Map of Huntingdonshire divisions in 1888 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time
• Map of Huntingdonshire divisions in 1944 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time