Place:Lydney, Gloucestershire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Lydney is a town and civil parish in Gloucestershire, England. It is on the west bank of the River Severn in the Forest of Dean District, and is 16 miles (25 km) southwest of Gloucester. The town has been bypassed by the A48 road since 1995. The population was about 8,960 in the 2001 census, reducing to 8,766 at the 2011 census.

Lydney has a harbour on the Severn, created when the Lydney Canal was built. Adjoining the town, Lydney Park gardens have a Roman temple dedicated to Nodens.

History

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

In 1588 the Vice-Admiral of England, Sir William Winter, was granted the manor of Lydney in recognition of his services against the Spanish Armada. In 1723 the Winter family sold their Lydney estate to the Bathurst family.

In 1810, docks were constructed to capitalise on the town's location, close to the River Severn. The River Lyd flows through the town and into the Severn.

In 1935, the title of Viscount Bledisloe of Lydney was created and awarded to Charles Bathurst upon his retirement as Governor-General of New Zealand.

Lydney from British History Online

"The parish was dominated by its landowners, particularly after the late 16th century when most of the land was formed into a large estate by the Winters, who were succeeded in possession by the Bathursts in 1723. The estate was unusually rich in non-agricultural resources, including fisheries, mineral deposits, and extensive woodland, and its owners also profited from the establishment of ironworks at the start of the 17th century and the reclamation of saltmarsh in the early 18th. In the early 19th century the building of a tramroad and harbour to serve the coal trade of the Forest of Dean began to transform Lydney's economy, which later benefited from the growth of the ironworks into a tinplate factory and from railway building."

Registration Districts

• Chepstow Registration District (1837 - 1937)
• Forest of Dean Registration District (1937 - 2006)
• 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:

• Lydney from A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume 5/Bledisloe hundred in the Victoria County History series provided by the website British History Online. Halfway through the chapter is a local map at a scale of approximately half-a-mile to the inch.
• 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