Place:Madley, Herefordshire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Madley is a village and civil parish in the English county of in Herefordshire. It is located six miles west of the city of Hereford. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 1,200. The parish includes the hamlets of Canon Bridge, Wormhill, Winmoor, Lulham, Upper & Lower Chilstone, Upper & Lower Shenmore, Cublington, Great & Little Brampton, Webton and Webton Court. Madley is the second largest parish in the county of Herefordshire.

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

"MADLEY, a village, a parish, and a [registration] sub-district, in the [registration] district and county of Hereford. The village stands 1½ mile S of the river Wye, 4¼ NW of Tram-Inn [railway] station, and 5¾ W by S of Hereford; dates from ancient times; was once a market-town; is now a seat of petty sessions; and has a post office under Hereford.

"The parish comprises 5,360 acres. Real property: £8,108. Population in 1851: 927; in 1861: 970. Houses: 198. A castle formerly stood at the village. A ferry for horses and carriages is on the Wye to Bridge-Sollers and Byford. The living is a vicarage, united with the [perpetual] curacy of Tiberton, in the diocese of Hereford. Value: £608. Patrons: the Dean and Chapter of Hereford.

"The church is partly Norman, but chiefly decorated English; has a polygonal apse, over a fine octagonal crypt, with central shaft and good groining; has, in the E end of a small chapel, a large fivelight window; has elsewhere windows mostly of twolights, in mixtures of early English and decorated English; has, at the W end, a beautiful embattled tower, surmonnted by a high turret, locally called 'Jacob's Chair'; and contains decorated sedilia, remains of stalls with desks and miserere seats, a remarkable ancient font, and several handsome monuments. A broken cross is near the church, and another is near the village. There are a Baptist chapel, a national school, and charities £27."

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.