Place:Tetbury, Gloucestershire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Tetbury is a small town and civil parish within the Cotswold District of Gloucestershire, England. It lies on the site of an ancient hill fort, on which an Anglo-Saxon monastery was founded, probably by Ine of Wessex, in 681.

During the Middle Ages, Tetbury became an important market for Cotswold wool and yarn. The Tetbury Woolsack Races, founded 1972, is an annual competition where participants must carry a 60 pound sack of wool up and down a steep hill (Gumstool Hill). The Tetbury Woolsack Races take place on the "late May Bank Holiday", the last Monday in May each year.

Notable buildings in the town include the Market House, built in 1655 and the late-eighteenth century Gothic revival parish church of St. Mary the Virgin and St. Mary Magdalene and much of the rest of the town centre, dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Market House is a fine example of a Cotswold pillared market house and is still in use as a meeting place and market (photograph in Wikipedia.

The population of the parish was 5,250 in the 2001 UK census, increasing to 5,472 at the 2011 census. Tetbury was an urban district from 1894 until 1935 when it became a civil parish within Tetbury Rural District. In 1931 the population of Tetbury was 2,237, about half of what it is today.

Registration Districts

Tetbury (1837 - 1937)
Cirencester (1937 - 2006)
Gloucestershire (2006 - )

Research Tips

• Gloucestershire Archives in Gloucester is where paper and microfilm copies of all records for this part of Gloucestershire are stored.

Online sources which may also be helpful:

• The Victoria History of Gloucestershire chapter on Tetbury, available online on the website British History Online.
• GENUKI gives pointers to other archive sources as well as providing some details on each parish in the county. 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. Respect the copyright on this material.
• The FamilySearch Wiki for Gloucestershire provides a similar but not identical series of webpages to that provided by GENUKI
• A Vision of Britain through Time has a group of pages of statistical facts for almost every parish in the county