Place:Shawbury, Shropshire, England

Watchers
NameShawbury
TypeParish (ancient), Civil parish
Coordinates52.783°N 2.65°W
Located inShropshire, England
See alsoNorth Bradford Hundred, Shropshire, Englandhundred in which it was part located
Pimhill Hundred, Shropshire, Englandhundred in which it was part located
Shrewsbury Liberty, Shropshire, Englanddivision of Shropshire in which it was located
Wem Rural, Shropshire, Englandrural district 1894-1967
North Shropshire Rural, Shropshire, Englandrural district 1967-1974
North Shropshire District, Shropshire, Englandadministrative district covering the area 1974-2009
Shropshire District, Shropshire, Englandunitary authority covering the area since 2009
source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
source: Family History Library Catalog
the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Shawbury is a village and civil parish in Shropshire, England. The village straddles the A53 road between Shrewsbury and Market Drayton. Looking further afield, it is 8.4 miles (13.5 km) northeast of Shrewsbury, 11.5 miles (18.5 km) northwest of Telford and 163 miles (262 km) northwest of London.

The 2011 UK census recorded a population of 2,872 for the entire civil parish of Shawbury.

Shawbury had an entry in the Domesday Book of 1086. In the great book Shawbury is recorded by the name "Sawesberie" and had a church and a mill. The main tenant was Gerard and the landowner was Earl Roger of Shrewsbury.

There has been a church in Shawbury village since at least the 12th century, although the present church is not from that date. Many Air Force personnel from RAF Shawbury, an air station founded in 1917, are buried in the churchyard, which contains 32 Commonwealth War Graves, 3 from World War I and 29 from World War II, besides 7 Polish Air Force personnel from the latter war.

end of Wikipedia contribution

Shawbury had a detached portion north of the neighbouring parish of Moreton Corbet. In 1934 this section was transferred to Moreton Corbet reducing the area of Shawbury from 7,367 to 6,611 acres.

Shawbury was part of Wem Rural District from 1894. When Wem Rural District was abolished in 1967, Shawbury was transferred into the North Shropshire Rural District which combined the rural districts of Wem and Ellesmere, together with their urban districts and also Whitchurch municipal borough. In 1974 the whole area became the non-metropolitan North Shropshire District which continued until 2009 when it was replaced by the unitary authority named Shropshire District. The Shropshire District now represents the whole of Shropshire with the exception of The Wrekin District.

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.
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Shawbury. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.