Place:Keresley, Warwickshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

"KERESLEY, a hamlet and a chapelry in Warwickshire. The hamlet is in Coventry-St. Michael parish; lies near the Coventry and Nuneaton railway, 1½ mile NNW of Coventry; and has a post office under Coventry. Acres: 1,058. Real property: £3,012. Population: 567. Houses: 118. The manor was given to the monks of Coventry, in the time of Henry III., by Roger de Montalt; and belongs now to Queen's College, Oxford. The ribbon manufacture is carried on.

"The chapelry includes also Coundon hamlet in Holy Trinity parish; bears the name of Keresley and Coundon; and was constituted in 1848. Acres: 2,104. Real property, £6,031. Population: 792. Houses, 170. The living is a [perpetual] curacy in the diocese of Worcester. Value: £105. Patron: the Bishop of Worcester. The church was built in 1847, at a cost of £3,000; and has a tower and spire. There is a national school."

In the latter half of the 19th century Keresley was a civil parish to the north of the border of Coventry. It included the settlements of Keresley End (also known as Keresley Village or, on today's maps, as Keresley Newlands) as well as the main settlement of Keresley itself further south.

For most of its history, Keresley was a combination of two further villages: Keresley Green was the most northerly and first to exist, but it was Keresley Heath to the south which was developed the most with the building of schools and the church of St. Thomas. However, in 1911 the construction of Coventry Colliery by the Warwickshire Coal Company near to Keresley Green brought the focus of development back to that area. (Source: Wikipedia)

In 1974 with the formation of the new county of the West Midlands separate from Warwickshire, Coventry and its environs became the Coventry Metropolitan Borough within the West Midlands. This expansion took in Keresley (Keresley Green and Keresley Heath). Keresley End (Keresley Newlands) remained in Warwickshire in the North Warwickshire District.

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.
• Victoria County History - Warwickshire - Vol 8, pp 77-83 - The City of Coventry: The outlying parts of Coventry, Keresley. British History Online. University of London (London, 1951).