Clifford Chambers, Gloucestershire Genealogy

Guide to Clifford Chambers, Gloucestershire ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
CLIFFORD-CHAMBERS (St. Helen), a parish, in the union of Stratford-upon-Avon, Upper division of the hundred of Tewkesbury, though locally in that of the hundred of Kiftsgate, E. division of the county of Gloucester, 2½ miles (S. by W.) from Stratford.

The parish was historically part of the county of Gloucestershire until 1931 when local government boundary changes placed it in the county of Warwickshire.

The village claims to be the real birthplace of William Shakespeare as the bubonic plague was rife in Stratford-upon-Avon at the time of the bard's birth and during times of plague Clifford Chambers rectory was used as a refuge. Shakespeare's father's legal advisor also lived in the village, the man who dealt with the Shakespeare's house in Stratford. Until 2004 the village was in its own parish but it is now part of the parish of Clifford Chambers and Milcote.

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
parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

Non-Conformist Churches

 * 1642-1996 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index (dates may vary by parish)

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

Maps and Gazetteers
Maps are a visual look at the locations in England. Gazetteers contain brief summaries about a place.


 * England Jurisdictions 1851
 * Vision of Britain