Place:Portswood, Hampshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Portswood is a suburb of Southampton in Hampshire, England. The suburb lies to the north-north-east of the city centre and is bounded by the neighbourhoods of Freemantle in Millbrook, Swaythling, and Bevois Valley which is closer in to the centre of Southampton than Portswood.

Portswood Ward comprises Portswood, Highfield and St. Denys, and had a population of 14,831 at the 2011 census.

Prior to 1894, Portswood was a tything in the parish of South Stoneham, at that time a parish more than ten times the size of Portswood Ward today, which stretched as far as Eastleigh to the north. A parliamentary paper from 1837 indicates that the Village of Portswood consisted of about thirty houses, and in the 1861 census, the population of the entire tything was placed at 3,546.

The Local Government Act 1894 divided South Stoneham into a number of parts, and Portswood became a civil parish in its own right. The population of Portswood civil parish was 10,038 in 1891, grew to 17,958 in 1901, and had reached 22,501 by 1911. Portswood parish at that time included parts of Bitterne parish and was approximately 1,037 acres (1.62 square miles), by comparison with today's 690 acres (1.08 square miles).

History

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Portsdown.

Research Tips

• Victoria County History of Hampshire, volume 3, chapter on Southampton.
• English Jurisdictions 1851 is a series of outline maps of ecclesiastical parishes thoughout England. It is very handy for working out the neighbourhoods covered by individual parishes, particularly in large towns and cities.
• GENUKI has a list of archive holders in Hampshire including the Hampshire Record Office, various museums in Portsmouth and Southhampton, the Isle of Wight Record Office and Archives.
• The Hampshire Online Parish Clerk project has a large collection of transcriptions from Parish Registers across Hampshire.
• A listing of all the Registration Districts in England and Wales since their introduction in 1837 together with tables listing the parishes that were part of each district and the time period covered, along with detailed notes on changes of parish name, mergers, etc. Do respect the copyright on this material.
• The three-storey City Museum in Winchester covers the Iron Age and Roman periods, the Middle Ages, and the Victorian period.
• Volumes in The Victoria County History Series are available for Hampshire through British History Online. There are three volumes and the county is covered by parishes within the old divisions of "hundreds".

A collection of maps on the A Vision of Britain through Time website illustrating the English county of Hampshire over the period 1832-1932 (the last two are expandible):

• The Hundreds of Hampshire, a map from HMSO Boundary Commissioners, dated 1832
• Hampshire showing parishes in their Rural Districts as of 1900, a map from the Ordnance Survey
• Hampshire showing parishes in their Rural Districts after the alterations of 1932, a map from the Ordnance Survey

• A group of maps of the post-1974 municipal districts or boroughs of Hampshire on Wikipedia Commons