Place:Elmdon, Warwickshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Elmdon is now a village within the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull in the county of West Midlands, England. The population of the Solihull ward containing Elmdon at the 2011 census was 12,067.

The name Elmdon means "hill of the elms". It is primarily a residential area. It was formerly home to Elmdon Aerodrome, which is now Birmingham Airport. Elmdon Parish Church dates from 1780 and overlooks the Rover Works, home of Land Rover since 1946.

Whilst mention is made in the Domesday Book (1086) of Elmdon, as being in the Hemlingford Hundred, it was little more than an estate until the opening of the Birmingham-Coventry turnpike through the parish created an important junction and staging-post where the modern Coventry Road crosses Old Damson Lane/Elmdon Lane. The focus of the village moved from the area immediately surrounding what is now the parish church (i.e. the Elmdon Hall estate and its vicinity) to this junction.

Notable residents of Elmdon Hall include the Spooner and Alston families, after whom nearby Alston Road is named. William Wilberforce (1759-1833) lived in Elmdon for some time after his marriage to Barbara Spooner; the church's Wilberforce Hall is named after him.

The northern suburbs of Solihull as far as the Coventry Road, and the entire Land Rover factory, are built on land that was once part of the estate. Much of this land was sold for development and agriculture in 1920, and the rest in 1930. The hall and its much-depleted grounds remained.

Elmdon Airport opened on land north of the Coventry Road in 1939, but was taken over and closed to civilian use by the Royal Air Force almost immediately, due to the outbreak of World War II. It re-opened after the war, and eventually became Birmingham Airport. The construction of the runways necessitated the closure of Elmdon Lane between the village and Marston Green to the north, and the demolition of Elmdon village itself. Two dwellings remain of the original settlement at the crossroads, and maps still show this point as the centre of Elmdon. The name these days largely refers to the church and park, so the focus of the parish has effectively returned to its pre-turnpike location.

Birmingham International railway station, on the West Coast Main Line, and the National Exhibition Centre, are adjacent to the airport and on the border between Elmdon and Bickenhill. Due to the extensive development of this area, very little remains of the original infrastructure, and the Airport-NEC complex can be seen as a self-contained small town.

end of Wikipedia contribution

Elmdon was originally an ancient parish in the Hemlingford Hundred of Warwickshire, England. It had no subsidiary chapelries or townships.

It was made a civil parish in 1866 and in 1894 it became part of the Solihull Rural District. In 1932 it was abolished as a civil parish and split between Bickenhill and Solihull. Since 1974 it has been part of the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull.

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.