Place:Great Washbourne, Gloucestershire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Great Washbourne is a village in Gloucestershire, England, 6 miles (10 km) east of Tewkesbury and 6 miles (10 km) west of Evesham.

Washbourne was mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, in the form "Waseborne". The name is from the Old English wæsse (genitive wæssan), meaning "swamp", and burna, meaning "stream", and so means "stream with land subject to flooding". "Great" was added much later (first recorded in the 17th century), to distinguish the place from the nearby Little Washbourne (see below).

Washbourne was an ancient parish. In the Middle Ages the manor was held by Tewkesbury Abbey. Before the Dissolution of the monasteries in the late 1530s it was known as Abbot's Washbourne, and for a while afterwards as King's Washbourne, to distinguish it from its neighbour, Knight's or Little Washbourne, which was a hamlet of Overbury in Worcestershire.

The parish became a civil parish in 1866, but in 1935 the civil parish was abolished and merged into the parish of Dumbleton.

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

"WASHBOURNE (Great), a parish in Winchcomb [registration] district, Gloucester; 4 miles E by N of Ashchurch [railway] station, and 4½ NNW of Winchcomb. Post town, Winchcomb, under Cheltenham. Acres, 470. Real property: £1,125. Population: 83. Houses: 24. The manor belongs to R. Prance, Esq. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Gloucester and Bristol. Value: £120. Patron: the Rev. Covey. The church is ancient."

Wikipedia also has an article on the Washburn family (prevalent under numerous surname variations in North America) who may have had their origins in the area of Great Washbourne.

Research Tips

• Gloucestershire Archives in Gloucester is where paper and microfilm copies of all records for this part of Gloucestershire are stored.

Online sources which may also be helpful:

• Great Washbourne in A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume 7/Tewkesbury hundred in the Victoria County History series provided by the website British History Online
• GENUKI gives pointers to other archive sources as well as providing some details on each parish in the county. The emphasis here is on ecclesiastical parishes (useful before 1837)
• A listing of all the Registration Districts in England and Wales since their introduction in 1837 and tables of the parishes that were part of each district and the time period covered with detailed notes on changes of parish name, mergers, etc. Respect the copyright on this material.
• The FamilySearch Wiki for Gloucestershire provides a similar but not identical series of webpages to that provided by GENUKI
• A Vision of Britain through Time has a group of pages of statistical facts for almost every parish in the county