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- the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia.
Rodney Stoke (#9 on map) is a civil parish and a small village 5 miles northwest of Wells. The village is on the A371 between the village of Draycott and Westbury sub Mendip. The fairly large village of Draycott is part of Rodney Stoke parish which had a population of 1,326 in the UK census of 2011. Draycott has been renamed Draycott in Rodney Stoke in WeRelate because there is another hamlet named Draycott in Somerset.
South of the A371 road the parish includes an area of the Somerset Levels, extending to the River Axe. North of the A371 the southern slopes of the Mendip Hills rise to an area of the parish on the Mendip plateau.
Rodney Stoke was listed in the Domesday Book of 1086 as "Stoches", meaning 'a stockaded settlement' from the Old English stoc. In 1291 the place name was recorded as "Stokgifford". The Giffords were Saxon nobility at the time of Edward the Confessor with Walter Gifford (then spelt Gifard) as the Earl of Buckingham.
The village was the home of, and is probably named after, Sir John Rodney (d. 1400). The first Baron Rodney was George Brydges Rodney (1718/19–92), a British naval admiral of Napoleonic times.
The church of St Leonard, was built around 1175 and is a Grade I listed building. The interior of the church contains a screen, bearing the date 1624, the gift of Sir Edward Rodney (1590 – 1657), which includes a representation of the martyrdom of St Erasmus, who was killed by having his entrails removed.
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Governance
Rodney Stoke was part of the Winterstoke Hundred, one of the hundreds or early subdivisions of the county of Somerset. In 1894 it was placed in the Wells Rural District where it remained until 1974.
In 1974, under the Local Government Act 1972, all urban and rural districts across England were abolished and counties were reorganized into metropolitan and non-metropolitan districts. Rodney Stoke became part of the non-metropolitan Mendip District in 1974.
Research Tips
- Stoke GENUKI page on Rodney Stoke.
- The Victoria History of the Counties of England – History of the County of Somerset, produced by The Institute of Historical Research at the University of London, does not provide any details on the parish and chapelries of Winterstoke Hundred.
- The Somerset Heritage Centre (incorporating what was formerly the Somerset Record Office and the Somerset Local Studies Library) can be found at its new location at Langford Mead in Taunton. It has an online search facility leading to pages of interest, including maps from the First and Second Ordnance Survey (select "Maps and Postcards" from the list at the left, then enter the parish in the search box).
The Heritage Centre has an email address: archives@somerset.gov.uk.
- Three maps on the A Vision of Britain through Time website illustrate the changes in political boundaries over the period 1830-1945. All have expanding scales and on the second and third this facility is sufficient that individual parishes can be inspected.
- Somerset Hundreds as drawn in 1832. This map was prepared before The Great Reform Act of that year. Note the polling places and representation of the various parts of the county.
- Somerset in 1900, an Ordnance Survey map showing rural districts, the boundaries of the larger towns, the smaller civil parishes of the time, and some hamlets and villages in each parish
- Somerset in 1943, an Ordnance Survey map showing the rural districts after the changes to their structure in the 1930s
- Maps provided by the National Library of Scotland are also very useful. This map is currently set to an area now in the Sedgmoor District as it existed in the late 19th century, but can be moved to anywhere in the county using a variety of background maps. There is a very good search facility.
- A Vision of Britain through Time has a group of pages of statistical facts for almost every parish in the county
- GENUKI gives pointers to other archive sources as well as providing some details on each parish. 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. The compiler has gone to a lot of work to provide this material. Respect his copyright.
- The FamilySearch Wiki for Somerset provides a similar but not identical series of webpages to that provided by GENUKI
- English Jurisdictions, a supplementary website to FamilySearch outlining local parish boundaries in the middle on the 19th century. The information provided is especially useful for establishing the relationship of the ecclesiastical parishes in large towns and cathedral cities.
- The Victoria History of the Counties of England – History of the County of Somerset, produced by The Institute of Historical Research at the University of London is a scholarly website with articles tracing the history of individual parishes which are sorted into their hundreds, the early subdivisions of the county. It traces the ownership of estates and manors, describes the local church in detail, and usually provides a map of each parish. The volumes for Somerset are much more recent than those for other counties. It appears to be a work in progress, only covering about half the county so far. A map of the places covered in the series is given in Volume 6, but 3 more volumes have been published since then. If a parish is included there will be a note in its Research Tips.
- The Somerset and Dorset Family History Society
- The Weston super Mare Family History Society
- The Bristol and Avon Family History Society
- A list of all Somerset parishes with online transcripts of parish registers The size of Somerset makes this a huge project. If it does not yield what you are looking for, try getting in touch with the organizer with patience and politeness.
- Somerset Online Parish Clerk project home page
- A collection of West Somerset Parish Register Transcriptions are online courtesy of Martin Southwood
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