Place:Mainstone, Shropshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Mainstone is a small village and civil parish in southwest Shropshire, England, near the border with Powys, Wales (formerly Montgomeryshire) and in the Clun Forest, a large remote and very rural area which is semi-forested and rather hilly.. The village lies approximately 1 mile northwest of the small village of Cefn Einion, also in Mainstone parish. The market town of Bishop's Castle lies some 3 miles to the east, while the small town of Clun is about 5 miles away to the south.

The Church of England parish church, dedicated to St John the Baptist, lies in the hamlet of Churchtown (alternatively written as "Church Town") a mile west of Mainstone, and the village itself contains a Primitive Methodist chapel, built in 1892 which was still in use in the mid-2000s. Mainstone was a chapelry in the parish of Clun and became a civil parish in 1866. (Source: A Vision of Britain through TimeA Vision of Britain through Time])

The River Unk originates in and then flows through the parish. Offa's Dyke also cuts north-south through the area, bisecting the hamlet of Churchtown.

Mainstone lies at around the 260m above sea level mark. The surrounding hills all peak at roughly 400-420m.

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

"MAINSTONE, a parish in Clun [registration] district, and mainly in Salop [or Shropshire], but partly in Montgomery[shire]; and a division in Clun hundred, [which is] wholly in Salop. The parish lies on Offa's dyke, 4 miles W by. S of Bishops-Castle [railway] station, and 7½ SSE of Montgomery; and comprises the townships of Mainstone, Edenhope, Knuck, and Reilth in Salop, and the township of Castle-Wright in Montgomery. Post town: Bishops-Castle, Shropshire. Acres of the Salop portion: 4,931. Real property: £9,925. Population: 220. Houses: 41. Acres of the Montgomery portion: 1,332. Real property, with Aston: £2,228. Population: 145. Houses: 32. The property is divided among a few. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Hereford. Value: £293. Patron: the Lord Chancellor. The church is a good building, with a belfry. Charities, £5."

According to A Vision of Britain through TimeA Vision of Britain through Time], Mainstone's links with Montgomeryshire ended in 1866.

Research Tips

• The historical short form for Shropshire was "Salop". This is quite often found in archive material.
• Shropshire Archives, Castle Gates, Shrewsbury SY1 2AQ
• Shropshire Family History Society.
• The GENUKI main page for Shropshire provides information on various topics covering the whole of the county, and there is also a link to a list of parishes. Under each parish there is a list of the settlements within it and brief description of each. This is a list of pre-1834 ancient or ecclesiastical parishes but there are suggestions as to how to find parishes set up since then.
• GENUKI also provides transcriptions of parish registers for numerous parishes throughout Shropshire. These will be noted at the bottom of this list as time permits for the parishes involved. Each register is preceded by historical notes from the editor-transciber and other details than simply births, marriages and deaths that have been found in the individual books from the parishes. These registers probably only go up to 1812 when the proscribed style for registers across the country was altered.
• GENUKI lists under each parish further references to other organizations who hold genealogical information for the local area. (URLs for these other websites may not be up to date.)
• The FamilyTree Wiki has a series of pages similar to those provided by GENUKI which may have been prepared at a later date and from more recent data. The wiki has a link to English Jurisdictions 1851. There is a list of all the parishes in existence in 1851 with maps indicating their boundaries. The website is very useful for finding the ecclesiastical individual parishes within large cities and towns.
• A Vision of Britain through Time, Shropshire, section "Units and Statistics" leads to analyses of population and organization of the county from about 1800 through 1974. There are similar pages available for all civil parishes, municipal boroughs and other administrative divisions that existed pre-1974. Descriptions provided are usually based on a gazetteer of 1870-72 which often provides brief notes on the economic basis of the settlement and significant occurences through its history.
• The two maps below indicate the boundaries between parishes, etc., but for a more detailed view of a specific area try a map from this selection. The oldest series are very clear at the third magnification offered. Comparing the map details with the GENUKI details for the same area is well worthwhile.

• Map of Shropshire illustrating urban and rural districts in 1900 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time. Parish boundaries and settlements within parishes are shown. (Unfortunately the online copy of this map has pencil codings in each parish which make it difficult to see the orignal.)
• Map of Shropshire urban and rural districts in 1944 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time. Parish boundaries and settlements within parishes are shown. This is not a repeat of the first map. There were a number of changes to urban and rural district structure in the 1930s.

• A map of the ancient divisions named "hundreds" is to be found in A Vision of Britain through Time. Some of the hundreds were broken into separate sections with other hundreds in between.
• The website British History Online provides four volumes of the Victoria County History Series on Shropshire. Volume 2 covers the religious houses of the county; Volume 4 provides a history of agriculture across the county, and Volumes 10 and 11 deal with Munslow Hundred, the Borough of Wenlock and the Telford area (i.e., the northeastern part of the county). The rest of the county is not presently covered. References to individual parishes will be furnished as time permits.