Place:Kimbolton, Herefordshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Kimbolton is a village and parish in Herefordshire, England, around 3 miles (5 km) northeast of Leominster and 15 miles (24 km) north of Hereford. The village is on the A4112 road, near its junction with the A49 road. The church is dedicated to St James, has 13th-century features and has two Norman windows in the chancel. The spire is shingled.

The parish had a population in mid-2010 of 434, increasing to 472 at the 2011 UK census.

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

"KIMBOLTON, a village and a parish in Leominster [registration] district, Hereford[shire]. The village stands on an eminence, 2½ miles NE of Leominster [railway] station. The parish comprises 4,061 acres. Post town: Leominster. Real property: £5,258. Population: 723. Houses: 151. The property is subdivided. About 160 acres are under hops. Traces exist of a Roman camp.

"The living is a [perpetual] curacy, united with the [perpetual] curacy of Middleton-on-the-Hill, in the diocese of Hereford. Value: £132. Patron: the Bishop of Hereford. The church is old and cruciform; has a tower and spire; and was repaired in 1853. There is a Primitive Methodist chapel."

Both the Imperial Gazetteer, The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland of 1868, and Wikipedia refer solely to Kimbolton, but A Vision of Britain through Time gives the name of both the chapelry and the civil parish as "Kimbolton with Hammish" as the preferred name, although "Kimbolton" is the official name. Ordnance Survey maps do not show Hammish within the parish, although they mark a place named Hamnish Clifford. Pages in 19th-century censuses (a sometimes questionnable source) have not been examined.

Research Tips

• Herefordshire Archive and Records Centre, Fir Tree Lane, Rotherwas, Hereford HR2 6LA is where paper and microfilm copies of all records for Herefordshire are stored. The Archives Centre has a website where the index to the archives (and also the wills catalog) can be searched. One item in the catalog is List of all Herefordshire parish register and bishops transcripts holdings which is a PDF file with information provided in an old version of Excel.

Online sources which may also be helpful:

• 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. Do respect the copyright on this material.
• The FamilySearch Wiki for Herefordshire 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
• Unfortunately, only one volume on Herefordshire has been published in the Victoria County History series. British History Online have produced a series of Ordnance Survey first edition maps for the county which may be helpful for mid-nineteenth century inquiries
• Ancestry.co.uk lists its collections of Herefordshire genealogical material.
• FindMyPast collections of historical records can be searched for Herefordshire. They have collections of parish records for the pre-1837 period.