Place:Longtown, 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

Longtown is a linear village and civil parish in Herefordshire, England. The parish includes the village of Clodock and had a population in mid-2010 of 543, increasing to 620 at the 2011 Census.

Longtown is located 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Abergavenny and 14 miles (23 km) southwest of Hereford on the eastern edge of the Black Mountains, Wales, part of the Brecon Beacons National Park.

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

"LONGTOWN, a village and a township-chapelry in Clodock parish, Hereford[shire]. The village stands on an affluent of the river Monnow, under the Black mountains, 1½ mile E of the boundary with Wales, 4¾ N by W of Pandy [railway] station, and 5 W by S of Abbeydore; contains a fragment of an ancient castle; and has fairs on 29 April, 22 June, and 21 Sept. The chapelry is extensive; but the acreage of it is returned with the parish. Post Town: Abbeydore, under Hereford. Real property: £4,912. Population: 892. Houses: 184. The living is a [perpetual] curacy in the diocese of Hereford. Value: £68. Patron: the Vicar of Clodock. There are a Baptist chapel and a free school."

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.