Temple Balsall, Warwickshire Genealogy

Guide to Temple Balsall, Warwickshire ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
BALSALL, Balshall, or Temple-Balsall, a chapelry in the parish of Hampton-in-Arden, Warwick; 3 miles E of Knowle r. station, and 9 W by S of Coventry. Additional information:

Temples Balsall St Mary the Virgin was made an Ecclesiastical parish in 1863.Temple Balsall was previously a chapelry of Hampton in Arden, Warwickshire Ancient Parish in Warwickshire.

It is named after, and dates from the time of, the Knights Templar. They farmed about 650 acres (2.6 km2) of the estate in the 12th century, and established a preceptory where a number of brothers lived and ran the estate. After the Order was suppressed, the estate was given to the Knights Hospitaller of St John. They lost it when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries and Queen Elizabeth I gave the estate to Robert Dudley.

The 13th century church and Old Hall, and 17th century almshouses survive Balsall, originally part of Hampton-in-Arden, was made a separate ecclesiastical parish in 1863 and was enlarged by the inclusion of part of Knowle in 1932. It is roughly an equilateral triangle, some 3½ miles from its base to its northern apex, with Berkswell on the east and Knowle and Barston on the west. The country is open, with very little woodland and many small streams and ponds, rising from 300 ft. in the north to about 400 ft. in the south. The village lies close to the River Blythe at the junction of Knowle and Barston parishes. The older roads are mostly lanes, but in the south-east on what was Balsall Heath a number of straight roads have been laid out since the inclosure in 1802, and here in the modern settlement of Meer End is the half-timbered mission church of St. Richard, opened in 1929. There is also a small modern church of St. Peter, Balsall Common, built of red brick.

From: 'Parishes: Balsall', A History of the County of Warwick: Volume 4: Hemlingford Hundred (1947), pp. 86-91. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=42661&amp;strquery=temple balsall Date accessed: 22 February 2011.

Temple Balsall (grid reference SP207760) is a hamlet within the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull in the English West Midlands. It was formerly in Warwickshire.

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Civil Registration
Birth, marriages and deaths were kept by the government, from July 1837 to the present day. The civil registration article tells more about these records. There are several Internet sites with name lists or indexes. A popular site is FreeBMD.

Church Records
The Church of England (Anglican) became the official state religion in 1534, with the reigning monarch as its Supreme Governor. Non-Conformist refers to all other religious denominations that are not the official state religion.

Church of England
Due to the increasing access of online records: Hover over the collection's title for more information Other Websites These databases have incomplete parish coverage.
 * Individual parish coverage for databases in this table are inconsistent and should be verified
 * Dates in the following table are approximate
 * Joiner Marriage Index - Warwickshire ($)
 * Genealogist Parish Registers - Warwickshire ($)
 * UK Websites for Parish Records - Links to online genealogical records
 * Online Genealogical Index - Links to online genealogical records
 * Ancestry Collection Birmingham, England, Church of England Baptisms, 1813-1919 ($)

Non-Conformists (All other Religions)

 * 1717 England & Wales, Roman Catholics, 1717 at FindMyPast ($), index and images (coverage may vary)

Poor Law Unions
Solihull Poor Law Union, Warwickshire

Probate Records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Warwickshire Probate Records to find the name of the court having primary jurisdiction. Scroll down in the article to the section Court Jurisdictions by Parish.

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