Place:Great Ness, Shropshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Great Ness is a civil parish in Shropshire, England. Together with Little Ness, the adjacent parish, it forms a single modern parish council. The villages of Nesscliffe, Hopton, Kinton, Willcot, Felton-Bulter and Alderton are all within the parish and all have been redirected here.

Great Ness is compact and consists of various styles of dwellings, many of which have become listed buildings. In total there are 25 listed buildings in the parish of Great Ness with a Grade II listing or higher.

The Church of Saint Andrew, the Church of England parish church in Great Ness is protected by Grade I listing. It was mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 as the "Manor of Nessham" due to it being one of the seven churches Roger de Montgomery, the first Norman Earl of Shrewsbury, retained in his own hands. The church is part of a benefice also including Little Ness and Ruyton-XI-Towns.

Throughout time Great Ness has had a few changes in registration districts. In 1935 the Ellesmere Registration District lost Great Ness to Oswestry Registration District and just over 30 years later, in 1967, Shrewsbury Registration District replaced Oswestry Registration District. Coincidentally the only major boundary change that took place was in 1967 when the area of Great Ness was reduced to aid the enlargement of another parish, Kinnerley.

Great Ness remained in Ellesmere Rural District from 1894 until 1967 when it was transferred along with Little Ness to Atcham Rural. Consequently, in 1974 when the rest of Ellesmere Rural District joined the North Shropshire District, Great and Little Ness joined the Shrewsbury and Atcham Borough. The Shrewsbury and Atcham Borough joined with most of the rest of Shropshire in becoming a unitary authority named the Shropshire District in 2009.

Between 1881 and 2001 Shropshire experienced a rapid population increase of 10.5% which is over twice as fast as the growth of England. However the increase has not been due to natural growth but the migration of people into the area. The most recent counts of Great Ness's population shows Great Ness to have a population of 807 at the 2001 UK census, and 879 at the 2011 Census.

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

"NESS (Great), a township and a parish in Ellesmere [registration] district, Salop [or Shropshire]. The township lies adjacent to the Potteries, Shrewsbury, and North Wales railway, between Kinnerley and Ness-Cliff [railway] stations, 8 miles, by road, N W by W of Shrewsbury. The parish contains also the townships of Alderton, Felton-Butler, Hopton, Kinton, Ness-Cliff, and Wilcott; and its post town is Baschurch, under Shrewsbury. Acres: 5,279. Real property: £6,267. Population: 573. Houses: 116. The property is divided among a few.

"The manor belongs to the Earl of Bradford. Ness Hall has belonged to the Edwards family since 1660. A remarkable cave is in the parish, divided into two sections by a massive rockpillar, and inscribed with the date 1564 and the initials of the outlaw Humphrey Kynaston. Fine red sandstoneis quarried. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Lichfield. Value: £305. Patron: the Lord Chancellor. The church is ancient, of different periods; has a tower; and is in good condition. There are a parochial school, and charities every fourth year £20."

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.