Place:Wallingfen, East Riding of Yorkshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Wallingfen and the village of Newport from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:

"NEWPORT, a village, a township, and a [registration] sub-district, in Howden [registration] district, [East Riding of] Yorkshire. The village stands on the Market-Weighton canal, 2 miles N E of Staddle-thorpe [railway] station, and 4¼ W of South Cave; and has a post-office under Brough. The township bears the name of Newport and Wallingfen, and is in Eastrington parish. Acres: 250. Real property: £1,026. Population: 348. Houses: 84.

"Most of the land, at the end of last century was a waste morass; and part of it, chiefly on account of its containing a bed of very excellent clay, is now highly valuable. The clay is dug to the depth of 30 feet from the surface, and is used for making bricks, tiles, and coarse earthenware. There are chapels for Wesleyans and Primitive Methodists."

Historically, Wallingfen was an extra parochial area with links to the ecclesiastical parish of Eastrington. It was located on the border between the wapentakes of Howdenshire and Harthill. As well as Newport Village (also known as New Village), the parish included the settlements of Sandholme Landing and Eight and Forty.

In 1894 Wallingfen became a civil parish in Howden Rural District. In 1935 the civil parish expanded to take in part of Scalby (near Howden) parish and was renamed Newport (near Howden). (See separate article.)

Research Tips

• GENUKI on Newport (and includes an explanation for Wallingfen). The GENUKI page gives numerous references to local bodies providing genealogical assistance.
• The FamilySearch wiki on the ecclesiastical parish of Eastrington provides a list of useful resources for the local area.
• Howdenshire History provides histories of towns and villages in the area provided by a local family historian. The stories of some families who emigrated to Ontario, Canada, are included.
• A Vision of Britain through Time on Wallingfen.
• A Vision of Britain through Time provides links to three maps of the East Riding, produced by the United Kingdom Ordnance Survey, illustrating the boundaries between the civil parishes and the rural districts at various dates. These maps all expand to a scale that will illustrate small villages and large farms or estates.

• Ordnance Survey 1888. The "Sanitary Districts (which preceded the rural districts).
• Ordnance Survey 1900 The rural districts, not long after their introduction.
• Ordnance Survey 1944. The rural districts after the revisions of 1935.

• An inspection of the area around the town of Howden on the Ordnance Survey map of 1900 brings up a number places indicated by letters and the phrase "Det.". An index for the letters can be found on the right of the map. At this point Howden appears not to be one entity, but a group of separate parts. The same could be said for its townships. The reason for these separate blocks probably reflects the need to have a river frontage by various land owners over cenutries past. In 1935 many of the parishes were consolidated into fewer larger ones. Depression may have brought about many sales of large estates during the first third of the twentieth century. This, in turn, would have enabled the alteration in parish boundaries.