Place:Orcop, Herefordshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Orcop is a village and civil parish in the county of Herefordshire, England. It lies 14 kilometres (8.7 mi) south of Hereford.

It has a well-preserved early Norman motte-and-bailey castle and a church dedicated to St. John the Baptist which has a chancel built around 1300, and a tower that was added early in the 16th century. The larger village of Orcop Hill is nearby.

http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/place/1895 A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Orcop from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:

"ORCOP, a village and a parish in the [registration] district and county of Hereford. The village stands on an affluent of the river Wye, 3¼ miles N W of the river Monnow, at the boundary with Monmouth, 3¾ S E of St. Devereux [railway] station, and 8½ W by N of Ross; and is a scattered place. The parish comprises 2,403 acres; and its post town is St. Weonards, under Ross. Real property: £1,900. Population: 583. Houses: 147. The manor belongs to G. Symons, Esq. The living is a donative in the diocese of Hereford. Value: £31. Patron: the Rev. A. Gray. The church shows peculiar and interesting features; was partly restored, partly rebuilt, in 1861; has a massive, richly moulded, oaken roof; has also a unique, three-staged, heavy, oaken tower, reconstructed after the model of a previous old tower; and contains a new carved stone pulpit. Charities, £7."

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.

Orcop