* London - districts, parishes,wards etc

[rob_it]

Part of my family history research spans years 1779 to 1940s London. I am having problems understanding districts, parishes, wards etc relating to Tower Hamlets, Whitechapel, Bethnal Green, Hackney, Dalston, St. Leonards, Camden & Shoreditch. These areas in particular are confusing me.
All of them are cropping up in addresses and locations, many in different orders, covering what appears to be the same area.

I'm trying to order them into 'Place' and 'Address' fields. Can anyone point me to say a map that clearly shows the historic boundaries
of this part of London so that I can order my data as that on a letter addressed envelope. Also is it wise to include the County after London in the Place field?

[davidm_uk]

Quite a good selection of maps here http://mapco.net/london.htm
Scroll down then select one, most of them are zoomable (with some maps it first shows an area map, but then scroll down to see it sectioned and you can click to view that section expanded).

In many parts the boundaries and names kept changing, so you might be hard pushed to find a single source of maps showing everything you want.

[Gowermick]

It is a problem for me too, and I grew up and worked there!
My favourites, are listest below, (cheapest first):-

The Alan Godfrey series of large scale Old Ordnance Survey Maps, which cover London and are also available for many parts of the country and for various years. Like all OS maps, are unindexed, but there are indexes available as a separate purchase.

The Harry Margary series of A-Z's for London. covering the Georgian (1738) , Regency (1813), and Victorian (1888) periods. These are Indexed, but I find Indexes sadly lacking.

Lastly, my bible, is the Phillimore Atlas & Index of Parish Registers. This contains maps of each county, (including London) and accompanying schematic maps detailing where the various parish boundaries were. It has a reference section for each County, which lists all the Parishes in the County, what Registers are available, and what Registration Districts they come under.

[AdrianBruce]

... Also is it wise to include the County after London in the Place field?

Warning - I am a Northerner, whose Bristolian relatives flitted in and out of the Great Metropolis. My perspective may therefore be different...

If you are going to conform to a 3 part place-name of settlement, county, country or a 4 part refinement of suburb, settlement, county, country, then you might feel that you have to have "Islington, London, Middlesex, England", say, for example. The problem I found with that was the guys in the census who just recorded their birthplace as "London", without telling me which county. I therefore didn't bother to try to leave a place for the unknown county, and effectively promoted "London" to be a psuedo-county in its own right, omitting mention of Middlesex, Surrey or whatever. Of course, when the London County Council was created in 1889, this makes sense but deciding what "London" is beforehand is tricky for someone like myself.

I eventually decided that "London" could be defined by the LCC area from 1889 on, by the Metropolitan Board of Works area for 1855-1889 and then I managed to extend that back a bit to 1851 by using the map of "London" as defined for the 1851 census - see http://www.histpop.org/ohpr/servlet/Pag ... t-nonblank. You can go even further back by reference to the various definitions of "London" for the purposes of the "Bills of mortality", which helped define the "Metropolis" in the 1801 to 1831 censuses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bills_of_ ... _the_bills.

All of which might be held to be a lot of URLs to excuse my omission of Middlesex!

[Gowermick]

This is the type of debate that could run and run. For simplicity sake, and for place name consistency with the rest of the Country, I use the standard Placename, County, Country and use the following guidelines. I ignore the ‘recent’ changes Adrian has mentioned, and use the historic Counties of Middlesex, Surrey, Kent, Essex and London.

Basically towns, villages, Hamlets in London, north of the Thames were in Middlesex or Essex. Those South of the Thames were in Surrey or Kent. London is reserved for those Parishes in the City itself.
So Bethnal Green, Shoreditch and Limehouse are in Middlesex.
Clapham, Battersea and Southwark are in Surrey
Canning Town and Leyton are in Essex
Woolwich and Greenwich are in Kent
Only those Parshes in the City of London are assigned to London

This may help when using FH, but doesn’t help when using on-line sites like Ancestry, who confusingly (but ultimately correctly) move places around, so Southwark moved from Surrey to London. So when searching, one has to amend the rules to relect this. When searching therefore, it is no good me sticking rigidly to Southwark, Surrey, when I know it became Southwark, London from around 1900.

To my way of thinking, one can use any system one likes as long as it is consistent and you can place a marker on the map at correct location.

Historic accuracy can be taken too far, but one needs to draw the line somewhere. For example, not many would agree to using old name of Stebendale (spelling may be dodgy) instead ofStepney, just because that was ts historic name.

[mjashby]

There are some useful London boundary maps on this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London which can be helpful in providing a Guide to what people traditionally meant (and in some cases still mean) by 'London', i.e. the City of London. Note that the 1805 Map shows an already expanding outline of what the City was as terms such as 'Cripplegate Within' and 'Cripplegate Without' show areas with were within or outside the original City Walls.

I agree with Mike Loney about 'London' geography; and follow very similar lines to him in using traditional County Names for recording research, which are also recognised by modern Geo-Mapping software. So, Islington is still in Middlesex, as is St Pancras, and not in London, unless you wish to use introduce the modern term 'Greater London'. This is evidenced to some extent if you look at the '2003-present' Map of City of London Wards on the above-mentioned Web Page, which still remains remarkably close to what London was considered to be in 1805.

Then of course there is the sometimes problematic issue of separating in the mind the City of London from the City of Westminster which is a distinct and separate place to the West of the City of London. As some residents frequently 'migrated, between the two; or may have lived in one but attended churches in the other for the purpose of Marriage, Baptisms etc. at a practical (remote) research level this can present some issues as Ancestry has published many London (London Metropolitan Archives held) Parish Registers etc., but FindMyPast has published many Westminster (Westminster Archives held) Parish Registers etc. under a separate business agreement.

Mervyn

[Gowermick]

Mervyn,
What I find hilareous is the difference in thinking between then (1800’s) and now. People often referred to their ‘place in the country’ when referring to their home in Westminster. One only has to read a little of Dickens to realise our perception of distance has altered dramatically through changes in transport, and he was only writing in the mid-1800’s.
When I lived in Rotherhithe, (just east of Tower Bridge), it was a nice (but longish) walk through the city, up Fleet Street, along Oxford Street, and on to Chelsea (then back home via river bus). In the 1800’s, this would have been a walk in the countryside, past open fields! - Ho Hum

[mjashby]

Mike,

Whilst I haven't lived in 'London', a lot of my 19th century paternal research is based on the Islington and St Pancras areas and yes, looking at what those areas are like now, it's difficult to get a clear grasp of the fact that in the first half of the 1800's Islington was still a largely rural community. Still, I suspect that most of the current population of the Borough would also struggle to get their heads around the facts.

Even though I was raised in Yorkshire, I was born in Croydon, which was very proudly in Surrey as far as all of the locals were concerned; and they would never have considered themselves to be Londoners. London was of course "up in Middlesex" - a cricketing enemy of Surrey!

Mervyn

[rob_it]

Thanks, davidm_uk. Some wonderfully detailed London maps there, what a mine of information on how London developed over time. - a great site.
Thanks Mike, I'm getting a copy (on loan) of The Phillimore Atlas and Index of Parish Registers from the Library.
Thanks Adrian & Mervyn for the references.
And a final thanks for your ideas on how I might deal with the situation.

[Bundle]

Cary's map of London (1804) from McMaster University Library is brilliant. So clear when zoomed, with no watermarks. Can snip the bit you want quite easily. I use it a lot for exploring around Hackney area.

http://digitalarchive.mcmaster.ca/islan ... po%3A80901

Nickie

[tatewise]

There are a great many useful maps in that digital archive, so I have added it to the research:useful_research_web_sites#world_wide|> Genealogy Research > Useful Research Web Sites > World Wide.

[davidm_uk]

Cary's map of London (1804) from McMaster University Library is brilliant. So clear when zoomed, with no watermarks. Can snip the bit you want quite easily. I use it a lot for exploring around Hackney area.

http://digitalarchive.mcmaster.ca/islan ... po%3A80901

Nickie

Great find, excellent maps, especially the high def .TIFF files. Also, if you go to the full list http://digitalarchive.mcmaster.ca/islan ... po%3A21508 there are lots of maps of other parts of the UK as well, including "A map of the country sixty five miles, round London" in 9 sheets (files) in the same sort of definition as the London ones that Nickie mentions. Other countries covered also. Well worth exploring this website.
Just beware, many of the high def .TIFF files are getting on for 1Gb in size.

[Bundle]

Thanks Mike and David. I will explore the site further, especially the 65 miles around London one.

Nickie

[StevieSteve]

There's also the FamilySearch historic maps which show the boundaries as at 1851 (I think). Can also overlay it on top of Google Maps

https://www.familysearch.org/mapp/#search

I also use it to define my 4-field Place in FH with the 2nd field being the "Ancient Parish" and Field 1 being any Ecclesiastical Parish or Chapelry, other smaller settlement etc

so

, Hackney, Middlesex, England
Dalston, Hackney, Middlesex, England
, St Pancras, Middlesex, England
Camden Town, St Pancras, Middlesex, England
Bethnal Green, Stepney, Middlesex, England
etc

Field 3 will either be Middlesex, Surrey, Kent, Essex or City of London

Usually works quite well though some look a bit daft:

Hounslow, Heston, Middlesex looks odd to me having lived there given that the postal address is Heston, Hounslow

Richmond, Wimbledon, Surrey is a bit non-intuitive. Wimbledon really must have been huge in t'olden days