Place:Oswestry, Shropshire, England

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NameOswestry
Alt namesOswestrysource: from redirect
Croesoswalltsource: Wikipedia
West Cottonsource: settlement in parish
Weston Cottonsource: same settlement in parish (GENUKI)
TypeParish (ancient), Civil parish, Borough (municipal)
Coordinates52.867°N 3.067°W
Located inShropshire, England
See alsoOswestry Hundred, Shropshire, Englandhundred in which it was located
Oswestry Borough, Shropshire, Englandnon-metropolitan district of which it was the principal settlement 1974-2009
Shropshire District, Shropshire, Englandunitary authority covering the area since 2009
source: Family History Library Catalog
source: Family History Library Catalog


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

Oswestry (Welsh: Croesoswallt) is a large market town and civil parish in Shropshire, England, close to the border with Wales. It is at the junction of the A5, A483 and A495 roads. It is one of the UK's oldest border settlements.

The town is five miles (8 km) from the Welsh border, and has a mixed Welsh and English heritage. It is the home of the Shropshire libraries' Welsh Collection. Oswestry is the largest settlement within the Oswestry Uplands, a designated natural area and national character area.

The town was the administrative headquarters of the Borough of Oswestry from its creation until it was abolished under local government reorganisation in 2009. Oswestry is the third-largest town in Shropshire, following the new town of Telford and the county town of Shrewsbury. The 2011 UK census recorded the population of the civil parish as 17,105 (up almost 10% from 15,613 in 2001) and of the urban area as 16,660. Prior to the creation of Oswestry Borough, the town was a municipal borough with a local government separate from that of the surrounding Oswestry Rural District.

History

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Oswestry.

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.
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Oswestry. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.