Place:Grinshill, Shropshire, England

Watchers
NameGrinshill
TypeParish (ancient), Civil parish
Coordinates52.806°N 2.712°W
Located inShropshire, England
See alsoShrewsbury Liberty, Shropshire, Englanddivision of Shropshire in which it was located
Wem Rural, Shropshire, Englandrural district 1894-1967
North Shropshire Rural, Shropshire, Englandrural district 1967-1974
North Shropshire District, Shropshire, Englandadministrative district covering the area 1974-2009
Shropshire District, Shropshire, Englandunitary authority covering the area since 2009
source: Family History Library Catalog


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

Grinshill is a small village and civil parish in Shropshire, England. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 UK census was 274. Grinshill Hill rises above the village to 192 metres (630 ft) above sea level.

Grinshill is east of the neighbouring parish of Clive and northeast of Shrewsbury. The A49 Shrewsbury to Whitchurch road is further east again.

Stone has been quarried at Grinshill since at least the twelfth century. Grinshill stone is a Triassic sandstone that was described by the Pevsner Architectural Guides as the "pre-eminent" building stone of Shropshire, and has been used in buildings as varied as the local Haughmond Abbey, Shrewsbury railway station and the Welsh Bridge in Shrewsbury. Further afield, Grinshill stone was used to make the lintels and door surround of Number 10 Downing Street (the prime minister's residence in London) and in the building of Chequers (his or her country residence in Buckinghamshire.

The village church is dedicated to All Saints.

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

"GRINSHILL, a parish in Wem [registration] district, Salop [or Shropshire]; near the Yorton station of the Crewe and Shrewsbury railway, 4 miles S of Wem. It has a post office under Shrewsbury. Acres: 827. Rated property: £1,730. Population: 317. Houses: 61. The property is divided among a few. Building stone is worked. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Lichfield. Value: £106 Patron: the Rev. John Wood. The church was enlarged in 1840, and is good. Charities, £6."

The parish was part of the Wem Rural District from 1894 until 1967. This indicates that it was at the northern margin of what was previously called the Shrewsbury Liberty, and the influence of the large town of Shrewsbury was less effective than it was closer to the centre. When Wem Rural District was abolished in 1967, Grinshill was transferred into the North Shropshire Rural District which combined the rural districts of Wem and Ellesmere, together with their urban districts and also Whitchurch municipal borough. In 1974 the whole area became the non-metropolitan North Shropshire District which continued until 2009 when it was replaced by the unitary authority named Shropshire District which represented the whole of Shropshire with the exception of The Wrekin District.

Research Tips

  • The historical short form for Shropshire was "Salop". This is quite often found in archive material.
  • Shropshire Archives, Castle Gates, Shrewsbury SY1 2AQ
  • Shropshire Family History Society.
  • The GENUKI main page for Shropshire provides information on various topics covering the whole of the county, and there is 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 also provides transcriptions of parish registers for numerous parishes throughout Shropshire. These will be noted at the bottom of this list as time permits for the parishes involved. Each register is preceded by historical notes from the editor-transciber and other details than simply births, marriages and deaths that have been found in the individual books from the parishes. These registers probably only go up to 1812 when the proscribed style for registers across the country was altered.
  • GENUKI lists under each parish further references to other organizations who hold genealogical information for the local area. (URLs for these other websites may not be up to date.)
  • 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 in 1851 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, Shropshire, section "Units and Statistics" leads to analyses of population and organization of the county from about 1800 through 1974. There are similar pages available for all civil parishes, municipal boroughs and other administrative divisions that existed pre-1974. 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 Shropshire 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. (Unfortunately the online copy of this map has pencil codings in each parish which make it difficult to see the orignal.)
  • Map of Shropshire 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. Some of the hundreds were broken into separate sections with other hundreds in between.
  • The website British History Online provides four volumes of the Victoria County History Series on Shropshire. Volume 2 covers the religious houses of the county; Volume 4 provides a history of agriculture across the county, and Volumes 10 and 11 deal with Munslow Hundred, the Borough of Wenlock and the Telford area (i.e., the northeastern part of the county). The rest of the county is not presently covered. References to individual parishes will be furnished as time permits.
  • A transcription of the Grinshill parish registers is online and is provided through the auspices of GENUKI.


This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Grinshill. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.