- source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
- source: Family History Library Catalog
| There are 8 different parishes named Whitchurch around England and Wales--according to the 2011 UK census. Care should be taken in selecting the right one.
|
- the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia
Whitchurch is a village in Herefordshire named after the church of Saint Dubricius which was originally white in colour.
Whitchurch is situated on the A40, connecting nearby Ross-on-Wye to Welsh town Monmouth. It is located near Symonds Yat and the Doward hills, so the village is used to tourists.
Until the 9th century, when it was taken over by Mercia, this area was within the Welsh kingdom of Ergyng. After the Norman conquest, the area became known as Archenfield and was governed as part of the Welsh Marches. It became part of Herefordshire, and England, in the 16th century, although the use of Welsh in the area remained strong until the 19th century. The Welsh name for the village, Llandywynnog, means "church of Tywynnog", derived from a personal name Gwynnog.
Within the parish in Symonds Yat (West) is the Old Court (now the Old Court Hotel) which was the ancestral home of the Gwillim family including Elizabeth Posthuma Gwillim. Thomas Gwillim built the Gwillim family burial enclosure at the church in 1744. John Graves Simcoe, first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada (1791–1796) and founder of Toronto, named Whitchurch Township in Ontario after the birthplace of his wife, Elizabeth Gwillim.
The primary school is Whitchurch Church of England Primary School, which holds awards for Investors in People and Eco Schools.
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.
|
