Place:Breinton, Herefordshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Breinton is a civil parish in Herefordshire, England. Breinton lies just to the west of Hereford. The population of this civil parish was 836 at the 2011 Census.

Breinton is a collection of hamlets two miles to the west of Hereford: Warham, Upper Breinton, Lower Breinton, Breinton Common and Veldifer; with a church (St. Michael’s) and a Village Hall.

There are not many English parishes bordering a built-up city that are so rural and have changed so little in the last 1000 years. In Breinton, one reason for that is the high quality of the deep red loam soils for agriculture and horticulture. Therefore, relatively few new buildings have been built on the valuable land since those shown on the 1839 tithe map. Another reason that Breinton remains rural is the beauty of the landscape, with vistas across hills, orchards, woods, and the valley of the River Wye. The parish boundary is irregular, but in general it encloses land between the River Wye and the A438 road that runs from Hereford towards Brecon in Wales. Half the population of Breinton (726 adults in the 2011 Census) live on or close to Kings Acre Road (A438).

Research Tips

• Herefordshire Archive and Records Centre, Fir Tree Lane, Rotherwas, Hereford HR2 6LA is where paper and microfilm copies of all records for Herefordshire are stored. The Archives Centre has a website where the index to the archives (and also the wills catalog) can be searched. One item in the catalog is List of all Herefordshire parish register and bishops transcripts holdings which is a PDF file with information provided in an old version of Excel.

Online sources which may also be helpful:

• 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. Do respect the copyright on this material.
• The FamilySearch Wiki for Herefordshire 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
• Unfortunately, only one volume on Herefordshire has been published in the Victoria County History series. British History Online have produced a series of Ordnance Survey first edition maps for the county which may be helpful for mid-nineteenth century inquiries
• Ancestry.co.uk lists its collections of Herefordshire genealogical material.
• FindMyPast collections of historical records can be searched for Herefordshire. They have collections of parish records for the pre-1837 period.