Place:Alvaston, Derbyshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Alvaston is now a large suburb and ward of Derby, England. Alvaston is situated on the A6 road, three miles southeast of Derby city centre. It is bordered to the north by the wards of Derwent (named for the river), Chaddesden and Spondon, to the west is the City Centre, to the south are Sinfin and Chellaston and to the east the district of South Derbyshire.

The village of Alvaston has existed since at least the eleventh century. Rapid expansion came in the second half of the 19th Century and in 1904 the electric tram replaced the horse-bus service. With the advent of the motor car, London Road became the A6. It became part of Derby in the 1968.

end of Wikipedia contribution

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

"ALVASTON, a township-chapelry in St. Michael parish, Derby; on the Derwent river, near the Midland railway, 3 miles SE of Derby. It has a post office under Derby. Acres: 870. Rated property: £2,930. Population: 558. Houses: 117. The property is much subdivided. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Lichfield. Value: £116. Patrons: the parishioners. The church was rebuilt in 1856. There are Presbyterian and Wesleyan chapels, and a church school."

History of Governance

Alvaston was originally a township in the ancient parish of Derby St. Michael in the Morleston and Litchurch Hundred of Derbyshire, England.

It was made a civil parish and in 1884 joined with the smaller neighbouring village of Boulton and a further civil parish named Elvaston to become the civil parish of Alvaston and Boulton. In 1894 Alvaston and Boulton became an urban district on the edge of Derby County Borough. In 1931 the urban district was abolished and Alvaston and Boulton became a civil parish in Shardlow Rural District. In 1959 Shardlow Rural District was abolished and replaced by the South East Derbyshire Rural District. In 1968 much of South East Derbyshire Rural District was absorbed into Derby County Borough which became a unitary authority in 1974. (Source: A Vision of Britain through Time)

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.

• Wikimedia Commons map of the post-1974 districts of Derbyshire. The numbers will be linked to the districts on the WeRelate district pages.
• Wikimedia Commons often provides a map of the ancient divisions named "hundreds", but there does not appear to be one for Derbyshire. This 1832 Ordnance Survey map from A Vision of Britain through Time is not as good as those in the Wikimedia Commons series.
• Derbyshire family history societies are listed in GENUKI.
• Towns and Villages of Derbyshire and the Peak District is a locally produced website designed for tourists.