In message <[log in to unmask]>, Brian Read
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>Can anyone tell me whether it was common before 1930 for a rural parish in
>England to consist of two or more entirely separate areas of land?
Yes very common. In our part of the country our local parishes - Purley,
Sulham, Tidmarsh Berks and Whitchurch Oxon were thoroughly mixed up.
Some bits of land were held in common by two or three parishes - I think
part of it was intended to ensure parishes otherwise in land were
allocated meadow land adjacent to the Thames.
>
>I've recently been researching the work of a Union and a Rural District
>Council in Oxfordshire c. 1900. The area I'm interested in had 20 civil
>parishes with roughly the same names as today's parishes but often with
>quite different boundaries.
>
>As I've been unable to find a clear and simple map showing the outline of
>these old parishes I looked at the OS 6 inch maps published c. 1912. These
>have parish boundaries marked with what can best be described as a line of
>full stops but these are sometimes unclear or come to an end in the middle
>of an open space. However I took tracings and to my surprise found that the
>shapes of parishes were sometimes odd, with long narrow areas of land
>extending miles from the central village. But even stranger was the fact
>that two parishes had areas of 2 or 3 square miles quite separate and well
>away from the rest of the parish. For example the parish of Ewelme had an
>area of about one mile square about 6 miles from the main part of the
>parish. This little outpost is marked an the OS map as "EWELME (Det. No.
>6)". This suggests that Ewelme had other detached areas. This detached area
>is shown as being in a different Rural District and in a different Union
>from the land which surrounds it.
>
>I think the situation was tidied up after the Local Government Act 1929 but
>it now seems a strange anomaly.
>
>Brian Read
--
John M Chapman
|