Place:Wyken, Warwickshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Wyken, a suburb of Coventry, England (since 1974 in the county of West Midlands) is situated between the areas of Stoke and Walsgrave, three miles northeast of Coventry city centre. The population of this Coventry ward taken at the 2011 census was 16,818. The ward is fairly large, spreading as far as the Binley area. The majority of the houses in Wyken are terraced houses.

The original parish ran close to the River Sowe.

The oldest building within Wyken is Saint Mary Magdalene's Church, located within Wyken Croft, which dates to the early 11th century. The village developed opposite the church and remained a small settlement until the 18th century at which point it began to expand. This original layout has since evolved as Wyken was incorporated into Coventry in 1932 resulting in boundary changes. Wyken became much larger than the original village and in the latest boundary change of 1993, Wyken received Coombe Fields from the parish of Rugby.

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

"WYKEN, a parish in Foleshill [registration] district, Warwick; 3 miles NE by E of Coventry [railway] station. Post town: Coventry. Acres: 670. Real property: £2,264; of which £550 are in mines. Population: 148. Houses: 29. The manor belongs to Earl Craven. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Worcester. Value: £115. Patron: Earl Craven. The church is good."

Wyken was originally a chapelry in the ancient parish of Coventry St. Michael, Warwickshire, England in the Knightlow Hundred of Warwickshire. Caludon is the location of the ruin of Caludon Castle, within the parish.

It was made a civil parish in 1866 and in 1894 it became part of the Foleshill Rural District. In 1932 Foleshill Rural District was abolished and Wyken was absorbed into Coventry. Since 1974 it has been in the Borough of Coventry.

Research Tips

• GENUKI main page for Warwickshire 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.
• Warwickshire and West Midland family history societies are listed in GENUKI.
• 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 at that date 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, Warwickshire, 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.
• 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 Warwickshire 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 Warwickshire 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. It shows the detached sections of Warwickshire as they were in 1832. These detached sections have now been moved into the counties that surrounded them.
• As of October 2016 Warwickshire Parish Registers, 1535-1984 are available to search online on FamilySearch
• As of September 2018 TheGenealogist has added over 1.5 million individuals to its Warwickshire Parish Record Collection and so increases the coverage of this Midland county for family researchers to find their ancestors baptisms, marriages and burials. These records are released in association with Warwickshire County Record Office and have the benefit of high quality images to complement the transcripts, making them a valuable resource for those with ancestors from this area. These are available to Genealogist Diamond Subscription holders.
• The website British History Online provides seven volumes of the Victoria County History Series on Warwickshire. The first (Vol 2) covers the religious houses of the county; Volumes 3 through 6 provide articles the settlements in each of the hundreds in turn, and Volumes 7 and 8 deal with Birmingham and Coventry respectively. References to individual parishes will be furnished as time permits.
• Victoria County History - Warwickshire - Vol 8, pp 119-124 - The City of Coventry: The outlying parts of Coventry, Wyken and Caludon. British History Online. University of London (London, 1951).