There are also the detached portions which arose from the gift of tithe.

However, much easier to demonstrate is a community's need for balanced land uses, leading to detached portions which might provide, for example, woodland, or meadow (and in some areas seashore). These detached portions might come about through aggregation (most typically the consolidation and sharing out of previously intercommoned grazing) or fragmentation (when a larger unit was split up, perhaps through the acquisition of parochial rights by a previously dependent chapelry, and again a process of sharing out ensued).

There is now an electronic Atlas of Historic Parishes of England and Wales, with pre-1850 boundaries of townships as well as the parishes themselves, available on CD from the History Data Service at the University of Essex.

Best wishes

Graham Jones

****************************************
Dr Graham Jones
Lecturer in English Topography
University of Leicester
        Centre for English Local History
Marc Fitch Historical Institute
5 Salisbury Road
Leicester LE1 7QR
United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0)116 252 2764
Fax: +44 (0)116 252 5769

e-Mail: [log in to unmask]
Web pages: http://www.le.ac.uk/elh/grj1
 

-----Original Message-----
From: GATLEY David A [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 27 June 2003 11:57
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Parish boundaries, c. 1900


Yes, very common.

There were several reasons for it.

1) William I when he liberated us in 1066, did not want his barons to
get too powerful. So when he allocated land he often divided parishes to
make it difficult for them to move troops.

2) Henry VIII when he dissolved the monasteries often sold off land in
parcels, which increased the fragmentation of parishes.

3) The church also had a lot of autonomy and they would occasionally
divide parishes to create a parcel of land that was exempt from taxes.

Actually the confusion was positively mind-blowing and the counties were
also fragmented. Part of Durham, for example, (Islandshire?) was on the
English/Scotland border with Northumberland in between! The Worcester
town of Dudley was in Staffordshire and poor Flintshire was in three
bits.

The first attempt to create a rational system was by Chadwick that
Victorian and foresighted genius who created the Poor Law Unions. Sadly
his name is for ever linked with the excesses of the 1832 Act (which
were anyway never fully enacted) and in the 1880s and 1890s rather than
building on the rational structure Chadwick created bowed to public
pressure in creating the system of local government, which was to create
and leave us with the many social problems we face today.

Hope this helps.

David

-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Read [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: 27 June 2003 11:38
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Parish boundaries, c. 1900


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?

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