Genealogy Chat

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If you've studied the history of a town where you and/or your ancestors have lived over a long period of time, you may be able to help me with this perplexing problem. If wanting to find out the current boundaries of a town, one simply looks at a post code map; here's one for Greater London: http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/postcodes/map.html Inside the area of SE1 is Southwark, but the moment you leave that area, you are no longer inside the same town. Now here's the difficult question: How can I trace the history of a town's boundary? Southwark certainly wasn't that shape in Roman times (although I'm not hoping to go back that far). Over the years counties have changed shape by gaining land and/or losing land; for example, here is a map showing the administrative changes to the County Of Surrey between 1889 and 1974: http://tinyurl(.)com/2297gw (remove brackets) But how were smaller, individual towns affected during the 1500s to 1900s? A town in Kent called Beckenham once looked the shape of a saucepan, but is now a standard polygon shape. Depending on these changes and which part of a town your ancestor was based in, he/she could have lived under different town names, even though they resided at the same farm/area for decades; one century they could have been living in Southwark, another century in Westminster, depending on if, how and when these town boundaries swayed in one direction or another (although farming was much farther out from the city of course). This problem has been bugging me for a few days now, so I'd be eternally grateful to anyone who has a solution. I consider myself an intelligent guy, but I sure as hell am unable to figure this one out. If somebody else knows then I would seriously have to rate that person.

To a large extent you have to work on a place by place basis. For example Denmead church parish started about 50 years before the Denmead civil parish. Quite often by Googling say Denmead + 'poor law' you will get quite a good summary of the standing of a place. Denmead was part of Hambledon parish etc etc. The local library for the place in which you are interested usually has good resources. Any university near by? Try its geography department for old maps (don't forget tithe maps). Ever so easy to get diverted though. In ports a man accused of murder was burnt at the stake. A woman was tied to a stake at the water line at low tide. At high tide she would be covered by the sea. I was looking up poor law unions at the time!! lol Clive

To begin with, if you haven't done so already, look at the relevant county/place name on GENUKI. For further details look at the historical directories of the area. Some of them give detailed descriptions of the history of a town or village. Jan

Thanks for your replies so far! I have old maps and directories of the towns/villages I'm researching, but I still don't know how they can help me trace the boundaries? On each of the old maps, I need to determine what is my Ancestor's town and what is foreign territory. Could her house be in Southwark, but her garden in Westminster? How do I know??

House in a and garden in b. Well yes can be tricky and some houses had the boundary run through the middle of them (deliberately because constables only functioned in their own patch.) If you want that sort of detail you probably need the vestry minutes (if they exist) which may record where the procession went when it beat the bounds of the parish. Again can be very diverting because it has interesting details which are not part of your look up!! Dioscean records may help - any change to one parish must have changed at least a second so cathedral records ought to have everything Clive

Have you tried the local Beckenham (wherever) History Group..you never know someone may have studied the subject of boundaries through time. Sheila