Place:Lower Slaughter, Gloucestershire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Lower Slaughter is a village in the English county of Gloucestershire, located since 1974 in the Cotswold District, 4 miles (6.4 km) southwest of the town of Stow on the Wold. It was originally a chapelry in the parish of Bourton on the Water.

The village is built on both banks of the River Eye, which also flows through Upper Slaughter. At the west end of the village there is a 19th-century water mill with an undershot waterwheel and a chimney for additional steam power. There is a ford where the river widens in the village and several small stone footbridges join the two sides of the community. While the mill is built of red brick, most of the 16th and 17th century homes in the village use Cotswold sandstone and are adorned with mullioned windows and often with other embellishments such as projecting gables.

Records exist showing that Lower Slaughter has been inhabited for over 1000 years. The Domesday Book entry has the village name as “Sclostre”. It further notes that in 1066 and 1086 that the manor was in the sheriff's hands.

Lower Slaughter Manor, a Grade-II listed 17th-century house, was granted to Sir George Whitmore in 1611 and remained in his family until 1964.

Registration Districts

Stow on the Wold Registration District, Gloucestershire, England|Stow on the Wold Registration District (1837 - 1937)
North Cotswold Registration District, Gloucestershire, England|North Cotswold Registration District (1937 - 2006)
Gloucestershire Registration District, Gloucestershire, England|Gloucestershire Registration District (2006 - )

Research Tips

• Gloucestershire Archives in Gloucester is where paper and microfilm copies of all records for this part of Gloucestershire are stored.

Online sources which may also be helpful:

• Lower Slaughter from A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume 6/Slaughter hundred in the Victoria County History series provided by the website British History Online
• 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. Respect the copyright on this material.
• The FamilySearch Wiki for Gloucestershire 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