Place:Shanklin, Isle of Wight, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Shanklin is a popular seaside resort and civil parish on the Isle of Wight, England, located on Sandown Bay. Shanklin is the southernmost of three settlements which occupy the bay, the others being Lake and Sandown. The sandy beach, its "Old Village" and a wooded ravine, Shanklin Chine, are its main attractions. Together with Sandown, Shanklin forms a built up area of more than 21,300 inhabitants according to the census of 2011.

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

"SHANKLIN, a village and a parish in the S E of the Isle of Wight. The village stands in a vale, about 300 feet above sea-level, near the coast and near the Isle of Wight railway, 8 miles S by W of Ryde; was known, at Domesday, as Senchiz; was, till recently, a very lovely collection of retired cottages; is now a fashionable watering-place, with shops, villas, and terraces; enjoys a remarkably mild climate and very picturesque environs; and has a head post-office, designated Shanklin, Isle of Wight, a [railway] station with telegraph, three good hotels, numerous lodging-houses, news-rooms, two churches, Independent and Bible Christian chapels, and a national school. The old church is partly of the 12th century; and includes transepts, erected in 1859. The new church was built in 1868. The parish comprises 672 acres of land, and 130 of water. Real property: £3,335. Population in 1851: 355; in 1861: 479. Houses: 96. The manor belonged, at Domesday, to Gosselin Fitz-Azor; and passed to the family of De Lisle. The manor-house stands to the N E of the church, and is a heavy-corniced and high-peaked building of the early part oflast century. The cottage inhabited by the authoress known as Home Lee is not far from the manor-house. [Shanklin] down flanks the S side of the village vale; has often been asserted to be a growing-hill, as to both height and bulk; and is alleged to have attained an increased height of at least 100 feet since the former part of last century. [Shanklin] chine flanks the shore immediately E of the village; is a romantic chasm, about 180 feet wide and 270 feet deep at the mouth, and about ½ a mile long; has rocky ledgy sides, covered with brushwood; and is traversed by a streamlet, wild and frolicsome, and making a fall ofabout 30 feet. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Winchester. Value: £47. Patron: F. W. Popham, Esq."

Shanklin was originally a chapelry in the parish of Bonchurch, but was recognized as a civil parish by the middle of the 19th century. Between 1894 and 1898 there was also a civil parish named East Shanklin, but the two were merged as an Urban District under the name Shanklin in 1898. In 1933 Shanklin Urban District merged with the neighbouring coastal parish of Sandown, plus Yaverland and parts of Brading and Bonchurch to become the urban district of Sandown-Shanklin.

In the nationwide reorganization of municipal administration of 1974 Sandown-Shanklin joined with Ventnor and the remaining parishes of the Isle of Wight Rural District to become the non-metropolitan South Wight District which lasted until 1974 when the whole island grouped together to become a unitary authority.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Shanklin. (no history, but lists some former inhabitants)

Research Tips

• Victoria County History of Hampshire, volume 5, chapter on Shanklin.
• Victoria County History of Hampshire has an outline map of the parishes of East Medina.
• The Isle of Wight Family History Society has a website with a lot of information.
• GENUKI has a list of archive holders in Hampshire including the Hampshire Record Office, various museums in Portsmouth and Southhampton, the Isle of Wight Record Office and Archives.
• The Hampshire Online Parish Clerk project has a large collection of transcriptions from Parish Registers across Hampshire.
• A listing of all the Registration Districts in England and Wales since their introduction in 1837 together with tables listing the parishes that were part of each district and the time period covered, along with detailed notes on changes of parish name, mergers, etc. Do respect the copyright on this material.
• The three-storey City Museum in Winchester covers the Iron Age and Roman periods, the Middle Ages, and the Victorian period.
• Volumes in The Victoria County History Series are available for Hampshire through British History Online. There are three volumes and the county is covered by parishes within the old divisions of "hundreds".

A collection of maps on the A Vision of Britain through Time website illustrating the English county of Hampshire over the period 1832-1932 (the last two are expandible):

• The Hundreds of Hampshire, a map from HMSO Boundary Commissioners, dated 1832
• Hampshire showing parishes in their Rural Districts as of 1900, a map from the Ordnance Survey
• Hampshire showing parishes in their Rural Districts after the alterations of 1932, a map from the Ordnance Survey

• A group of maps of the post-1974 municipal districts or boroughs of Hampshire on Wikipedia Commons