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- source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
- source: Family History Library Catalog
- the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia
Twyford is a large village and civil parish in the English royal county of Berkshire, with a population of 6,618 people. It is in the Thames Valley at on the A4 between Reading and Maidenhead, close to Henley-on-Thames and Wokingham.
History
- the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia
The village's toponym is Anglo-Saxon in origin, and means double ford. It is a common name in England. Twyford had two fords over two branches of the River Loddon, on the Old Bath Road to the west of the centre. According to the chronicler Geoffrey Gaimar, after King Æthelred of Wessex and his brother, the future King Alfred the Great, were defeated by the Vikings at the Battle of Reading in 871, they escaped by a ford over the River Loddon at Twyford which was not known to their pursuers. William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, who was a well known philanthropist who donated his life savings to Loddon Village Hall, spent the final years of his life in Ruscombe Fields, a property close to Twyford, and is remembered by a residential street named 'Pennfields'.
Twyford was primarily an agricultural settlement until the coming of the railway in 1838 put it on the Great Western main line to the west and subsequently made it a junction for the Henley Branch Line. However, its position on the Bath Road had always brought activity which was centred on the King's Arms, an important coaching inn. The opening of a by-pass in 1929 finally ended the east–west flow of main road traffic through the centre, but Twyford is still on a busy north–south route from Wokingham in the south to Henley-on-Thames in the north. The greatest expansion, however, has taken place since the Second World War, particularly in the last 50 years, with the construction of several estates north and south of the village.
Source: Kelly's Directory of Berkshire (1915), transcribed by Robert Monk ©2012 for GENUKI.
- "TWYFORD, constitued a civil parish 23 June 1895, is on the banks of the Loddon water, and is an ecclesiastical parish, formed April 14, 1876 out of the hamlet of Twyford, in the liberties of Broad Hinton and Whistley, under the Benefice Act, 1838 (1 and 2 Vic. c. 106); it has a station on the Great Western railway, which is also the junction of the line to Henley, and is 5 miles east from Reading, 7 1/2 miles south-west from Maidenhead, 4 south from Henley-on-Thames and 34 from London, and is in the Eastern Division of the county, petty sessional division and union of Wokingham, county court district of Reading, rural deanery of Sonning, archdeaconry of Berks and diocese of Oxford...."
Research Tips
Maps
- GENUKI's collection of maps for Berkshire. For basic reference are the two online maps Berkshire Parishes (highly recommended) and Berkshire Poor Law Union areas. These locate the individual parishes and indicate the urban and rural districts to which each belonged. There are many other maps listed, some covering specific parts of the county.
- Wikipedia's outline map of the unitary authorities, shown on many of their Berkshire pages, shows how the new divisions of government relate to the former districts. It has to be remembered that the county was reshaped in 1974 with the urban and rural districts of Abingdon and Faringdon and part of Wantage going to Oxfordshire, and the Borough of Slough (with Eton) coming in from Buckinghamshire. Every attempt is being made to indicate here in WeRelate the civil parishes, towns and villages for which these transfers occurred. Currently there are maps to be found on place pages that deal with civil parishes that transferred from Buckinghamshire into Berkshire. It is planned to provide maps within WeRelate for places that transferred from Berkshire to Oxfordshire--a much wider geographical area.
- The extensive collection provided by Genmaps is provided free of charge online (currently offline, March 2016).
- The Ordnance Survey has produced an up-to-date map of the boundaries of all the post-1974 districts throughout the country. This also shows the electoral constituency boundaries which are destined to change before 2020.
Online Historical References
- Berkshire Record Office. The Berkshire Record Office [BRO] was established in 1948 to locate and preserve records relating to the county of Berkshire and its people, and anyone who is interested in the county's past. As well as original documents, catalogues and indexes, there is a library at the Record Office.
- Berkshire Family History Society Research Centre. "The Berks FHS Centre can help you - wherever your ancestors came from. There is a Research Centre Library open to all."
- West Berkshire Museum, Newbury, is housed in a building with an interesting past, but is currently closed for redevelopment. No information on their collections.
- The GENUKI provision for Berkshire has been updated more recently than that for some of the other counties. A member of the Berkshire Family History Society is credited with this revision.
- The FamilySearch Wiki on Berkshire explains the jurisdictions relating to civil affairs, parishes and probate (wills and testaments) for each parish in the county and also outlines when these jurisdictions were in existence. Alterations required to cover the post-1974 period have not been carried out for every parish concerned.
- Brett Langston's list of Registration Districts in Berkshire will lead to specific parishes with dates.
- Local History Online is a compilation of websites from Berkshire local history clubs, societies and associations.
- The Berkshire section of The Victoria History of the Counties of England, in four volumes, is provided by British History Online. Volumes 3 and 4 provide an extensive history of the county, parish by parish, up to the end of the 19th century. There are local maps illustrating the text. Manors and their owners are discussed. Parishes are arranged in their original "hundreds"; the hundred for each placename in the Berkshire section of WeRelate will eventually be available.
Nineteenth Century Local Administration
English Jurisdictions is a webpage provided by FamilySearch which analyses every ecclesiastical parish in England at the year 1851. It provides, with the aid of outline maps, the date at which parish records and bishops transcripts begin, non-conformist denominations with a chapel within the parish, the names of the jurisdictions in charge: county, civil registration district, probate court, diocese, rural deanery, poor law union, hundred, church province; and links to FamilySearch historical records, FamilySearch Catalog and the FamilySearch Wiki. Two limitations: only England, and at the year 1851.
During the 19th century two bodies, the Poor Law Union and the Sanitary District, had responsibility for governmental functions at a level immediately above that covered by the civil parish. In 1894 these were replace by Rural and Urban Districts. These were elected bodies, responsible for setting local property assessments and taxes as well as for carrying out their specified duties. Thses districts continued in operation until 1974. Urban districts for larger municipalities were called "Municipal Boroughs" and had additional powers and obligations.
Poor Law Unions, established nationally in 1834, combined parishes together for the purpose of providing relief for the needy who had no family support. This led to the building of '"union poorhouses" or "workhouses" funded by all the parishes in the union. The geographical boundaries established for the individual Poor Law Unions were employed again when Registration Districts were formed three years later. In 1875 Sanitary Districts were formed to provide services such as clean water supply, sewage systems, street cleaning, and the clearance of slum housing. These also tended to follow the same geographical boundaries, although there were local alterations caused by changes in population distribution.
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