Place:Alberbury, Shropshire, England

Watchers
NameAlberbury
Alt namesAlberbury Upper Quartersource: township in parish
Banseleysource: township in parish
Middletown (Alberbury)source: township in parish
Uppington (Alberbury)source: township in parish
Wattlesboroughsource: township in parish
Crugionsource: township in Welsh part of parish
TypeTownship, Parish (ancient)
Coordinates52.723°N 2.95°W
Located inShropshire, England     ( - 1886)
Also located inMontgomeryshire, Wales    
See alsoFord Hundred, Shropshire, Englandhundred in which it was part located
Cawrse Hundred, Montgomeryshire, Waleshundred in which it was part located
Alberbury with Cardeston, Shropshire, Englandparish into which it was merged in 1886
source: Family History Library Catalog


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

"ALBERBURY, or Abberbury, a township and a [registration] subdistrict in the district of [registration] Atcham, Salop [Shropshire]: and a parish, partly in the same district and county, and partly in the [registration] district and county of Montgomery[shire]. The township lies on Watling-street, near the Severn, 4 miles SW of Bas church [railway] station, and 9 W by N of Shrewsbury; and has a post office under Shrewsbury. Acres, with Wollaston chapelry: 6,471. Population, exclusive of Wollaston: 632. Houses: 110. The township is called Alberbury Lower Quarter; and the chapelry is called Alberbury Upper Quarter. Loton Hall, the seat of Sir Baldwin Leighton, Bart., is adjacent. A priory for black monks was founded at Alberbury by Fitzwarren, in the time of Henry I., and was given by Henry VI. to All Souls' College, Oxford.
"The [registration] subdistrict of Alberbury comprises two parishes and part of a third. Acres: 12,034. Population: 2,235. Houses: 446.
"The parish of Alberbury comprises the two Alberbury Quarters in Salop, and the townships of Banseley, Middletown, and Uppington, and the chapelry of Criggion in Montgomery. Acres: 9,599. Real property: £8,429. Population: 1,918. Houses: 360. The property is subdivided. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Hereford. Value: £187. Patron: All Souls' College, Oxford. The church is ancient. The vicarages of Wollaston and Criggion are separate benefices. Charities, £17. Glyn, a hamlet in this parish, was the birthplace of old Parr."
the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia which describes Alberbuy as a 21st century village

Alberbury is a village in Shropshire, England, 9 miles (14 km) west of Shrewsbury on the B4393 road which travels from Ford to Lake Vyrnwy (a reservoir in Wales). It is on to the England-Wales border, marked by Prince's Oak.

The River Severn runs just north of the village, and most of the village is in a designated conservation area.

Alberbury Castle is at the centre of the village as is Loton Hall and the attached deer park (Loton Park).

As part of the development of Central Ammunition Depot Nesscliffe in World War II, an ammunition depot was built beneath Loton Park. This was used for storage of incendiary ammunition and chemical weapons shells and was operated in co-operation with and guarded by the United States Army Air Forces.


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 Alberbury parish registers is online and is provided through the auspices of GENUKI.
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Alberbury. 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.