- source: Family History Library Catalog
- the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia
Rowington is a village and civil parish in the English county of Warwickshire. It is five miles northwest of the town of Warwick and five miles south-west of the town of Kenilworth. The parish, which also includes Lowsonford, Pinley and Mousley End(all redirected here), had a population of 925 according to the 2001 UK Census, increasing to 944 at the 2011 census.
The Grand Union Canal runs just south of the village and the M40 motorway is also close by. The parish church of St. Laurence which dates from medieval times is found on a hill in the centre of the village. In Tudor times Rowington manor was owned by Catherine Parr, the sixth wife of King Henry VIII of England. Possibly the most famous building however is Shakespeare Hall, where a branch of William Shakespeare's family is reputed to have lived at the same time he was alive, and indeed Rowington is specifically mentioned in Shakespeare's will. It was rumoured he wrote As You Like It there.
There were once several windmills in the village but only one remains and its sails have been removed and the building converted into a house. At one time Rowington quarries supplied sandstone for several important buildings including St Philip's Cathedral in Birmingham, the local parish church of St Laurence and nearby Baddesley Clinton manor house. No quarries remain in Rowington. The village is home to several farms and livery yards.
For 20 years (1866-1886) Pinley was a civil parish, but appears to have been reabsorbed into Rowington. It cannot be found on Google Earth although Lowsonford is visible.
Research Tips
- GENUKI main page for Warwickshire provides information on various topics covering the whole of the county, and 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 provides references to other organizations who hold genealogical information for the local area. There is no guarantee that the website has been kept up to date and therefore the reader should check additional sources if possible.
- Warwickshire and West Midland family history societies are listed in GENUKI.
- 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 at that date 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, Warwickshire, section "Units and Statistics" leads to analyses of population and organization of the county from about 1800 through 1974. There are pages available for all civil parishes, municipal boroughs and other administrative divisions. 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.
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- A map of the ancient divisions named "hundreds" is to be found in A Vision of Britain through Time. It shows the detached sections of Warwickshire as they were in 1832. These detached sections have now been moved into the counties that surrounded them.
- As of October 2016 Warwickshire Parish Registers, 1535-1984 are available to search online on FamilySearch
- As of September 2018 TheGenealogist has added over 1.5 million individuals to its Warwickshire Parish Record Collection and so increases the coverage of this Midland county for family researchers to find their ancestors baptisms, marriages and burials. These records are released in association with Warwickshire County Record Office and have the benefit of high quality images to complement the transcripts, making them a valuable resource for those with ancestors from this area. These are available to Genealogist Diamond Subscription holders.
- The website British History Online provides seven volumes of the Victoria County History Series on Warwickshire. The first (Vol 2) covers the religious houses of the county; Volumes 3 through 6 provide articles the settlements in each of the hundreds in turn, and Volumes 7 and 8 deal with Birmingham and Coventry respectively. References to individual parishes will be furnished as time permits.
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