Place:Iver, Buckinghamshire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

source: Family History Library Catalog

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Iver is in the south-east corner of the English county of Buckinghamshire and is a large civil parish in the South Bucks District which, in addition to the central clustered village of the same name, includes the largely residential co-neighbourhoods of Iver Heath and Richings Park.

When Slough was transferred to Berkshire in 1974, the southernmost parts of the parish of Iver were also transferred. These included the village of Colnbrook which is now linked with Poyle in Berkshire.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

In the Domesday Book of 1086 the whole area was recorded as Evreham or homestead by the brow of a hill and it was in the possession of a man called Robert Doiley.

In 1351 the area was granted a Royal charter to hold a weekly market. This charter was confirmed 110 years later in 1461.

Iver

Iver village on the Uxbridge to Langley road has a pre-Domesday foundation and Neolithic pottery fragments and other artefacts have been discovered. The village church has shards of a Saxon window, and elements dating from the 15th century, 16th century and 17th century can be seen. The village has numerous houses from the 16th and 17th centuries.

Iver Heath

Iver Heath is the location of Heatherden Hall, a Victorian estate with spectacular grounds. It was purchased by Lt. Col. Grant Morden, a Canadian financier, who transformed the mansion by adding a huge ballroom and Turkish bath. During the 1930s it became a retreat and private meeting place for politicians and diplomats. The agreement to form the Irish Free State was signed at Heatherden Hall. The Church of St Margaret was built in 1862. Iver Heath itself is centred on a triangle of roads. The village post office is on the Slough Road to the south, while a parade of shops used to be found along Church Road to the north. Slough Road and Church Road are connected by Bangors Road North to the east.

Richings Park

Richings Park was once the estate of Lord Bathurst. Richings Park mansion, very briefly the home of RAF Bomber Command, was destroyed during World War II, and its site is now a residential area with its own shopping facilities. The cellars of the house are still visible in fields now overlooking the M4.

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

"IVER, a village, a parish, and a sub-district, in Eton [registration] district, Bucks. The village stands on the river Colne, near the Grand Junction canal and the boundary with Middlesex, 1½ mile WNW of Drayton [railway] station, and 2¾ SSW of Uxbridge; dates from ancient times; takes its name from Sir Roger de Ivery, who came in with William the Conqueror; is a scattered place; was once a market town; has still a fair on 10 and 11 July; is a seat of courts leet and baron; and has a post office under Uxbridge. The parish comprises 6,149 acres. Real property, £15,336; of which £18 are in fisheries. Population in 1851: 1,985; in 1861: 2,114. Houses: 429. The property is subdivided. Thorney Farm is said to have been a residence of Oliver Cromwell. Richings Park, now the seat of Meeking, Esq., was the residence of Lord Bathurst, frequented by the most distinguished wits of his time; passed from him to the Earl of Hertford; and was frequented, under the auspices of Lady Hertford, by all the poets of her time. A walk adjoining it is specially associated with the memory of Pope, and bears the name of Pope's Walk. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Oxford. Value: £115. Patron: Meeking, Esq. The church was restored in 1848, at a cost of £2,800; and contains monuments to Sir George and Sir Edward Salter, carvers to Charles I. The [perpetual] curacy of Iver-Heath is a separate benefice. There are an endowed national school, and charities £117.

"The subdistrict contains also four other parishes, and part of another. Acres: 17,380. Population: 5,787. Houses: 1,204."

Research Tips

Maps

• An outline map of the current civil parishes of Buckinghamshire (post 1974 and omitting Milton Keynes unitary authority) is provided by the Boundaries Commission.
• Another map which gives no source, appears to have been drawn to show the county in the late 19th century and labels the parishes directly. However, the map does not show towns and villages (unless they are parishes using the same name) and some parishes have been found to be missing from this map.
• A map provided by the Open University (a British university based in Milton Keynes) gives the locations of the old civil parishes and the new communities that make up Milton Keynes. It can be expanded to read the labels.

Registration Offices

Birth, marriage and death certificates can now be ordered online from Buckinghamshire County Council. The full postal address is Buckinghamshire Register Office, County Hall, Walton Street, Aylesbury, HP20 1YU.

The Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies (County Hall, Walton Street, Aylesbury, HP20 1UU) holds

• Church of England and Nonconformist churches including registers of baptism, marriage and burial.
• Around 35,000 wills proved by the Archdeaconry of Buckingham.
• County and District Councils (lists of councillors, minutes of meetings, etc).
• Quarter and Petty Session courts.
• Landed estates of families including the Aubrey-Fletchers, Hampdens, Carringtons and Fremantles.
• Historic maps including OS, tithe and inclosure maps
• A wide range of local history books, some for loan.
• Pamphlets and articles of local history interest.
• Local newspapers
• Computers for access to family history resources like Ancestry and FreeBMD.
• Published material is listed in the Library Catalogue.
• Catalogues to some of our manuscript material is available through Access to Archives, part of The National Archives (TNA). Their database contains catalogues describing archives held locally in England and Wales and dating from the eighth century to the present day.

In Buckinghamshire, as with other counties in England and Wales, the location of offices where Births, Marriages and Deaths were registered has altered with other changes in local government. A list of the location of Registration Offices since civil registration began in 1837 has been prepared by GENUKI (Genealogy: United Kingdom and Ireland). The table also gives details of when each Registration Office was in existence. In the case of Buckinghamshire, the same registration offices were used for the censuses since 1851. Buckinghamshire now only has a central registration office at County Hall in Aylesbury, but there are facilities for registering births, marriages and deaths in specific libraries around the county.

Nineteenth Century Local Administration

English Jurisdictions is a webpage provided by FamilySearch which analyses every ecclesiastical parish in England at the year 1851. It provides, with the aid of outline maps, the date at which parish records and bishops transcripts begin, non-conformist denominations with a chapel within the parish, the names of the jurisdictions in charge: county, civil registration district, probate court, diocese, rural deanery, poor law union, hundred, church province; and links to FamilySearch historical records, FamilySearch Catalog and the FamilySearch Wiki. Two limitations: only England, and at the year 1851.

During the 19th century two bodies, the Poor Law Union and the Sanitary District, had responsibility for governmental functions at a level immediately above that covered by the civil parish. In 1894 these were replace by Rural and Urban Districts. These were elected bodies, responsible for setting local property assessments and taxes as well as for carrying out their specified duties. Thses districts continued in operation until 1974. Urban districts for larger municipalities were called "Municipal Boroughs" and had additional powers and obligations.

Poor Law Unions, established nationally in 1834, combined parishes together for the purpose of providing relief for the needy who had no family support. This led to the building of '"union poorhouses" or "workhouses" funded by all the parishes in the union. The geographical boundaries established for the individual Poor Law Unions were employed again when Registration Districts were formed three years later. In 1875 Sanitary Districts were formed to provide services such as clean water supply, sewage systems, street cleaning, and the clearance of slum housing. These also tended to follow the same geographical boundaries, although there were local alterations caused by changes in population distribution.

Online Historical References

• The Buckinghamshire section of The Victoria History of the Counties of England, in four volumes, is online and provides an extensive history of the county, parish by parish, up to the end of the 19th century. Parishes are arranged in their original "hundreds", a fairly archaic scheme of dividing counties into reasonably sized sections.

• GENUKI for Buckinghamshire provides a lot of material on the county history from a variety of aspects. The maps of the hundreds are reproduced from 19th century publications and show the topology as well as the locations of the various parishes. There is also a schematic map covering the whole county. GENUKI does not contain much information about the 20th century and beyond.

• Local History Online provides a list of local historical organizations. Each of these societies and organizations has its own website.

• The FamilySearch Wiki on Buckinghamshire explains the jurisdictions relating to civil affairs, parishes and probate (wills and testaments) for each parish in the county and also outlines when these jurisdictions were in existence. The data does not cover the post-1974 period.