Place:Warfield, Berkshire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

Warfield was part of the Wargrave Hundred and the Easthampstead Poor Law Union. The parish was located in the Easthampstead Rural District 1894-1974, and since that date in Bracknell administrative district and Bracknell Forest unitary authority.

the following information is based on an article in Wikipedia

Warfield is now a village and civil parish in the English county of Berkshire and the Borough of Bracknell Forest. The parish is mostly rural and made up of a number of small settlements. Warfield Village consists of the few houses around the parish church in the centre of the parish, but the West End, Newell Green, Warfield Street and Hayley Green area just to the south is generally referred to as 'Warfield'. To the north are the hamlets of Hawthorn Hill, Jealott's Hill, Moss End and Nuptown. In the south of the old parish, Wick Hill and Priestwood were amongst the earliest suburbs of the new town of Bracknell, in which parish they now lie. The High Street area of Bracknell itself was originally in Warfield parish. Warfield Park is an area of residential park homes. New housing developments in Warfield have taken place since the 1980s and include Whitegrove, Quelm Park and Lawrence Hill.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Warfield was originally an Anglo-Saxon settlement and is recorded in the Domesday Book as Warwelt [sic]. The name is believed to have originated from the Old English wær + feld, meaning 'Open land by a weir'. The medieval church is one of the finest in Berkshire, particularly noted for its Decorated Period chancel with beautiful carvings and 'Green Men'. There are several memorials to the Stavertons who lived at the old manor house in the moat at Hayley Green. This was replaced, in the Georgian period, by Warfield House alias Warfield Grove, the home of Admiral Sir George Bowyer and, later, the political writer, Sir John Hippisley. Another fine old country house was Warfield Park. In the 18th century, it was the home of John Walsh, the Secretary to Lord Clive and an amateur scientist, and later to his descendants the Lords Ormathwaite. It was pulled down in 1955. Warfield Hall, built in the 1840s, is the former home of Field Marshal Sir Charles Brownlow.

There was formerly much brickworking in the south of the parish, most notably under the Lawrence family. The Thomas Lawrence & Sons Brickworks was founded in 1857, and by the late 19th century was producing over 12 million bricks a year. The brown clay to be found in this area was ideal for making rich warm red-fired bricks, and Lawrence's bricks were used in the building of the Albert Hall, Westminster Cathedral and in restoration work at 10 Downing Street and Hampton Court Palace. The brickworks closed in 1985, and the last of the buildings were pulled down in the 1990s to make way for the housing development, Lawrence Hill. A memorial to the brickworks was put in place near the original site.

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.