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| NOTE: Six different counties in England have a place named Willington. Check your sources carefully.
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- the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia
Willington is a village and civil parish in the South Derbyshire District of Derbyshire, England. The 2001 UK census recorded a parish population of 2,604, increasing to 2,864 at the 2011 UK census.
Willington is on the River Trent about 6 miles (10 km) southwest of Derby. The parish is within 0.5 miles (800 m) of the Staffordshire county boundary and the village is about 5 miles (8 km) northeast of Burton upon Trent.
In the 18th century Willington became the highest navigable port on the Trent. It first began to grow from a population of 477 with the construction of the Trent and Mersey Canal in 1777, the same year the Bass Brewery in Burton upon Trent started production. Willington became a small inland port and a village with four public houses, all selling locally brewed beers from Burton upon Trent for the many Irish canal navvies.
The railway was built in 1838, the railway station being called Repton and Willington railway station and brought the scholars to nearby independent Repton School. The village's population had increased to 708 by 1940.
The bridge over the Trent was opened on 7 August 1839, being the only one between Swarkestone and Burton.
History
In the Domesday Book of 1086, the village is called Willetune or Willentune, and the land was held by Ralph FitzHubert, who held many estates in Derbyshire at the time. Willington was considered to be an agricultural village on the flood plain of the Trent.
Manors
Willington, an ancient parish in the hundred of Morleston and Litchurch, comprised two estates as recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086, one held by the king in demesne, the other by Ralph FitzHubert:
- 1. King Henry II (1154–1189) gave a manor in Willington to Burton Abbey. This estate was held in 1539 from Burton Abbey by George Finderne, Esquire. John Meynell, Esquire, died seised of it in 1561 and it was sold in 1760 by his descendant Hugo Meynell, Esq. to Sir Henry Harpur, 6th Baronet (1739–1789), the father of Sir Henry Crewe, 7th Baronet (1763–1819) who was the proprietor in 1817. No remains survive of the Meynell's manor house.
- 2. The other manor appears to have been held from FitzHubert by the de Willington family, which took its name from the manor. It appears to have given this manor together with the advowson of the church to Repton Abbey, to whom the tithes were appropriated in 1223. The de Willingtons were later seated at Yate and Sandhurst in Gloucestershire, and later at Umberleigh in Devon. In about 1554 William Westcote conveyed this manor to Sir John Port (d.1557), founder of Repton School and of the hospital at Etwall, and in 1817 it continued to form part of the estate belonging to those foundations, which also held the tithes and advowson of the vicarage.
Research Tips
- Derbyshire Record Office website
- British History Online (Victoria County Histories) does not appear to cover Derbyshire geographically. A History of the County of Derby: Volume 2, edited by William Page is a part-volume covering the religious houses of the county. No further volumes have been found.
- GENUKI main page for Derbyshire which provides information on various topics covering the whole of the county, and 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 provides references to other organizations who hold genealogical information for the local area. There is no guarantee that the website has been kept up to date and therefore the reader should check additional sources if possible.
- 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 which gives the registration district and wapentake for each parish, together with statistics from the 1851 census for the area.
- A Vision of Britain through Time, Derbyshire, section "Units and Statistics" leads to analyses of population and organization of the county from about 1800 through 1974. There are pages available for all civil parishes, municipal boroughs and other administrative divisions. 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.
- For a more detailed view of a specific area try a map from the following 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. Sections of the 1900 map showing parish boundaries only have been reproduced on some (but not all) parish pages here in WeRelate.
- Map of Derbyshire 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.
- Map of Derbyshire 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 some changes in urban and rural district structure in the 1930s.
- Ordnance Survey map of Derbyshire for 1967 This is the last in this series and was made while Derbyshire was experimenting with the non-metropolitan district structure adopted in 1974. It is a much cleaner map for reading the names of the civil parishes, but the smaller villages are no longer visible.
- These are only three of the series of maps to be found in A Vision of Britain through Time.
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