- source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
- source: Family History Library Catalog
- the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia
Campton is a village in the Central Bedfordshire district of Bedfordshire, England. It is part of the civil parish of Campton and Chicksands (population 1,700) with the nearby Chicksands. It is about south of Bedford, and is about north-west from Letchworth and sits on a tributary of the River Ivel. It is just to the west of Shefford. The 13th century Church of All Saints is in the centre of the village.
Campton is mentioned in the Domesday Book. The entry reads: Chambeltone: Ralph de Lanquetot from Walter Giffard; Fulbert from Willian d'Eu; Thurstan. The name Campton is derived from a British stream name similar to the name Camel in Cornwall.
Chicksands is to the north of the village, and consists almost entirely of the wooded Chicksands Priory estate. It was used as an American military base until 1995 and returned to the British military. If was first reopened as the Defence Intelligence and Security Centre (DISC) in 1997, which in turn became the Joint Intelligence Training Group (JITG) in 2015.
For local government purposes it forms part of Central Bedfordshire Council and is within the Mid Bedfordshire parliamentary constituency, whose MP is currently Nadine Dorries of the Conservative Party.
Research Tips
- The website British History Online provides three chapters of the Victoria County History Series on Bedfordshire. The first covers the religious houses of the county; the second and third provides articles on the parishes of the county. The parishes are arranged within their "hundreds".
- GENUKI main page for Bedfordshire 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.
- Bedfordshire 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, Bedfordshire, 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.
- These two maps 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.
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