Place:Sheriffhales, Shropshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Sheriffhales is a scattered village in Shropshire, England, north-east of Telford, north of Shifnal and south of Newport. The name derives from Halh (Anglican) and scīr-rēfa (Old English) which is a combination of Hales (a nook of land, small valley) and Sheriff (a king's executive). At the time of the Domesday Book, it was held by Roger de Balliol the Sheriff of Shropshire.

As well as Sheriffhales itself, the modern civil parish of Sheriffhales includes the smaller settlements of Lilyhurst, Burlington, Heath Hill, Weston Heath, Redhill and Chadwell. The parish has a population of about 700 people, however it reached 1019 people in 1850, when the Duke of Sutherland owned most of it. The village was in Staffordshire until 1895 when the border between Staffordshire and Shropshire was moved. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 722.

Despite being a small village of around 100 people, there is a primary school, a Church of England church (St Mary's) and a local post office, as well as a playing field with football goals and a children's playground. The church is a Grade II listed building that dates back to the 12th century.

Between 1663 and 1697, when its founder moved to London, Sheriffhales was home to a dissenting academy run by nonconformist minister John Woodhouse.

Sheriffhales was the site of the World War II PoW Camp 71, located along the drive to Lilleshall Hall. The camp was intended for Italian Prisoners of War and housed up to 2,000 until Italy surrendered in 1943; thereafter it was used to house German PoW's until 1948 when most were repatriated.

The 2007 Tour of Britain bike race passed through the village on the first of September as part of the Wolverhampton to Birmingham stage.

The main farm within the village, Meadow Farm, was a predominantly dairy farm, but has been subsequently converted into an arable farm. It is also the centre for a point to point yard.

Sheriffhales is mentioned (under the name "Hales") in the Ellis Peters novel The Confession of Brother Haluin.

Hope Vere Anderson is Lord of the Manor of Sheriffhales and descends from the senior branch of the Hope Vere's of Lesmahagow, Scotland. The Hope Vere's trace their ancestry to Roger De Vere who was Lord of the Manor of Hales and when he became Sheriff of Shropshire in the 16th century he changed the name of his Manor from that of Hales to Sheriffhales to reflect his importance in being appointed to this additional role.

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.
• A transcription of the Sheriffhales parish registers is online and is provided without charge through the auspices of GENUKI.