Place:Metham, East Riding of Yorkshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Metham is now a hamlet in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England, It is situated approximately 4 miles (6.4 km) east of Goole and 2 miles (3.2 km) west of Blacktoft. It lies 1.5 miles (2.4 km) north of the River Ouse, not far from where it flows into the River Trent and becomes the Humber.

Historically, Metham was in the ecclesiastical parish of Howden in the wapentake of Howdenshire. From 1894 until 1935, Metham was a civil parish in Howden Rural District. In 1935, it was absorbed into the neighbouring civil parish of Laxton.

Research Tips

• GENUKI on Metham. The GENUKI page gives numerous references to local bodies providing genealogical assistance.
• The FamilySearch wiki on the ecclesiastical parish of Howden provides a list of useful resources for the local area.
• Howdenshire History provides histories of towns and villages in the area provided by a local family historian. The stories of some families who emigrated to Ontario, Canada, are included.
• A Vision of Britain through Time on Metham.
• A Vision of Britain through Time provides links to three maps of the East Riding, produced by the United Kingdom Ordnance Survey, illustrating the boundaries between the civil parishes and the rural districts at various dates. These maps all expand to a scale that will illustrate small villages and large farms or estates.

• Ordnance Survey 1888. The "Sanitary Districts (which preceded the rural districts).
• Ordnance Survey 1900 The rural districts, not long after their introduction.
• Ordnance Survey 1944. The rural districts after the revisions of 1935.

• An inspection of the area around the town of Howden on the Ordnance Survey map of 1900 brings up a number places indicated by letters and the phrase "Det.". An index for the letters can be found on the right of the map. At this point Howden appears not to be one entity, but a group of separate parts. The same could be said for its townships. The reason for these separate blocks probably reflects the need to have a river frontage by various land owners over cenutries past. In 1935 many of the parishes were consolidated into fewer larger ones. Depression may have brought about many sales of large estates during the first third of the twentieth century. This, in turn, would have enabled the alteration in parish boundaries.