Place:Wolvey, Warwickshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Wolvey is a village and civil parish in Warwickshire, England. According to the 2001 UK census it had a population of 1,741, increasing to 1,942 at the 2011 UK census.

The village, originally on the main route between Leicester and Coventry, is now on the B4065 and B4109 roads and is located on the Warwickshire/Leicestershire border in an outlying part of the Borough of Rugby; the village is, however, more than 11 miles (18 km) northwest from the town of Rugby and closer to Hinckley (five miles to the north), Nuneaton (six miles to the northwest) and Coventry (ten miles southwest). It is also close to the source of the River Anker. The medieval hamlet of Bramcote forms a western part of the parish. This was the site of a Second World War airfield, RAF Bramcote, subsequently used by the Royal Naval Air Service and renamed HMS Gamecock. Since 1959 it has been used by the army and is known as the Gamecock Barracks.

Discoveries of Neolithic flint tools and Bronze Age burial mounds suggest early occupation of the parish while a major Roman road, Watling Street, forms part of the parish boundary. The village certainly existed in Saxon times and the Domesday Survey, compiled in 1086, records 22 households with three further households at Bramcote. By the 12th century there was an additional township, which included a chapel, at the now deserted site of Little Copston (Copston Parva). At this time Wolvey was an important population centre for the area with a weekly market and an annual fair.

The village still retains some older buildings including the church of St John the Baptist with its Norman doorway and monumental tombs of Thomas de Wolvey (died 1311) and his wife Alice; also that of Thomas Astley and his wife, Catherine (died 1603). The South Aisle of the church was rebuilt by Thomas de Wolvey’s daughter Alice as a memorial Chantry to her husband Sir Giles de Astley who died following the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. The church building has undergone considerable repair and alteration over the years. The chancel was rebuilt in the gothic style by Lord Overstone of Wolvey Grange in the mid-nineteenth century and the present porch to the south door added in 1909.

Wolvey was a farming community where, in the nineteenth century, knitting and weaving became important trades in the village for a time. Milling provided an important service for the area and it is reputed at one time to have had 27 windmills in the area, although none now remains.

end of Wikipedia contribution

Wolvey was originally an ancient parish in the Knightlow Hundred of Warwickshire, England.

It was made a civil parish in 1866 and in 1894 it became part of the Nuneaton Rural District. In 1932 Nuneaton Rural District was abolished and Wolvey was transferred to Rugby Rural District. Since 1974 it has been part of the non-metropolitan Rugby District.

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.

• Map of Warwickshire 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.
• Map of Warwickshire 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.

• 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.
• Victoria County History - Warwickshire - Vol 6, pp 281-287 - Parish: Wolvey. British History Online. University of London (London, 1951).