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- source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
- source: Family History Library Catalog
- source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
- the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia
Shillington is a mainly farmed English village and civil parish in Bedfordshire, England. Its workforce, scattered, mainly commutes to London or nearby towns and it has a sizeable retired population. In the south of the parish the hamlet of Pegsdon is a salient of the county into Hertfordshire. Since 1985 its administration has included the village of Higham Gobion, southwest on the minor road leading to the A6 road, the main north-south road in the district. It has a population of 1,831 and is centred midway between two major railway lines. Farmland and hedgerows forms 95% of the land use and to the south and north of the boundaries is intermittent woodland.
A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Shillington from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:
- "SHILLINGTON, or Shiltington, a village, a parish, and a [registration] sub-district, in Ampthill [registration] district, Beds. The village stands 3 miles WSW of Henlow [railway] station, and 5¼ NW of Hitchin; and has a post-office under Hitchin. The parish contains also Pegsdon and Lower Stondon hamlets. Acres: 5,030. Real property: £8,393. Population in 1851: 1,598; in 1861: 1,788. Houses: 365. The manor belongs to the Rev. G. Musgrave. Coprolites are largely worked. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Ely. Value: £128. Patron: Trinity College, Cambridge. The church is decorated and later English. There are chapels for Independents and Methodists, a large school, a library and reading room, alms houses for four widows, and other charities, £13."
Research Tips
- The website British History Online provides three chapters of the Victoria County History Series on Bedfordshire. The first covers the religious houses of the county; the second and third provides articles on the parishes of the county. The parishes are arranged within their "hundreds".
- GENUKI main page for Bedfordshire which provides information on various topics covering the whole of the county, and 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 provides references to other organizations who hold genealogical information for the local area. There is no guarantee that the website has been kept up to date and therefore the reader should check additional sources if possible.
- Bedfordshire family history societies are listed in GENUKI.
- 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 at that date 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, Bedfordshire, 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. 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.
- These two maps 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.
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