User:Lionelfullwood/Sandbox5

England Canterbury (city)

Guide to Canterbury (city) history, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.



HISTORY
Canterbury is one of the oldest areas to be populated in the British Isles. The Canterbury area has been inhabited since prehistoric times. Lower Paleolithic axes, and Neolithic and Bronze Age pots have been found in the area.

Canterbury was first recorded as the main settlement of the Celtic tribe of the Cantiaci, which inhabited most of modern day Kent. The Romans entered South East England early in their quest to conquer the area known as Britnania, and, in the 1st century AD, the Romans captured the settlement and named it Durovernum Cantiacorum. After the Romans left Britain in 410 Durovernum Cantiacorum was abandoned except by a few farmers and gradually decayed.

In 597, Pope Gregory the Great sent Augustine to convert its King Æthelberht to Christianity. After the conversion, Canterbury, being a Roman town, was chosen by Augustine as the center for his episcopal see in Kent, and an abbey and cathedral were built. Augustine thus became the first Archbishop of Canterbury.

Kent was one of the primary focuses of the Vikings for their raiding parties during the ninth and tenth centuries AD. Canterbury suffered great loss of life during the Danish raids.

Remembering the destruction caused by the Danes, the inhabitants of Canterbury did not resist William the Conqueror's invasion in 1066.

After the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket at the cathedral in 1170, Canterbury became one of the most notable towns in Europe, as pilgrims from all parts of Christendom came to visit his shrine.

In 1448 Canterbury was granted a City Charter, which gave it a mayor and a high sheriff; the city still has a Lord Mayor and Sheriff.

By the 17th century, Canterbury's population was 5,000; of whom 2,000 were French-speaking Protestant Huguenots, who had begun fleeing persecution and war in the Spanish Netherlands in the mid-16th century. The Huguenots introduced silk weaving to Canterbury, and this became a major source of industry, in cottages throughout the city. However by 1820 the city's silk industry had been killed by imported Indian muslin.

The twentieth century saw little development. Canterbury was too far from both the coast and London to become a major player in any industrial development. The biggest expansion of the city occurred in the 1960s, with the arrival of the University of Kent at Canterbury and Christ Church College.

LOCATION
Canterbury is located in east Kent, about 55 miles from London. The Thames Estuary is about 8.5 miles away, to the north.

The city is on the River Stour or Great Stour, flowing from its source at Lenham north-east through Ashford to the English Channel at Sandwich. The river divides south east of the city, one branch flowing though the city, the other around the position of the former walls. The two branches rejoin or are linked several times, but finally recombine around the town of Fordwich, on the edge of the marshland north east of the city.

The area around Canterbury is rich in alluvial soil, and is very fertile. This part of Kent provides a market culture for the London area. It is well known for growing hops, used in the brewing of beer. Additionally there are many areas of the South Downs nearby to Canterbury that are used for the raising of sheep.

RELIGION
Sheffield has no known preferences historically. While nominally the Church of England is the largest religious group, the city is not known for its religious activity.

In terms of religion, 53% of the population are Christian, 6% are Muslim, 0.6% are Hindu, 0.4% are Buddhist, 0.2% are Sikh, 0.1% are Jewish, 0.4% belong to another religion, 31% have no religion and 7% did not state their religion.

INDUSTRY
Sheffield is the quintessential example of an English city that was ideally suited for the Industrial Revolution. Initially small cottage Industries were founded nearby, but these were rapidly annexed into the growing city.

In the 14th century, Sheffield was already noted for the production of knives, as mentioned in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. By the early 1600s it had become the main center of cutlery manufacture in England outside of London, overseen by the Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire.

The fact that there are a number of collieries close to Sheffield, as well as access to Yorkshire iron ore, provided the impetus for the rapid growth of the steel industry.

Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet is a Museum location within the city of Sheffield that exemplifies the conditions found in a village at the start of the Industrial Revolution.



During the 1740s, a form of the crucible steel process was discovered that allowed the manufacture of a better quality of steel than had previously been possible. Sheffield became the center of high quality steel for the whole of the U.K. This process was rendered obsolete in 1856 by Henry Bessemer's invention of the Bessemer converter, also a Sheffield invention.

While iron and steel have long been the main industries of Sheffield, coal mining has also been a major industry, particularly in the outlying areas, and the Palace of Westminster in London was built using limestone from quarries in the nearby village of Anston.

Following the rapid decline of the steel industry in the UK during the last 50 years of the twentieth century, Sheffield has had to re-invent itself.

Sheffield organized the Advanced Manufacturing Park in cooperation with Sheffield's universities and other independent research organizations. Organizations located on the AMP include the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC, a research partnership between the Boeing Company and the University of Sheffield), Castings Technology International (Cti) and TWI.

Sheffield is now a major retail center, with most of the UK's main High Street Shopping organizations represented. A number of old steel facilities have bee rebuilt as shopping malls, and function as shopping centers for the region.

Sheffield recently built a District Energy system that exploits the city's domestic waste, by incinerating it and converting the energy from it to electricity. It also provides hot water from the cooling of the turbines, and this is distributed through over 25 miles (40 km) of pipes under the city, via two networks.

CIVIL REGISTRATION
Birth, marriages and deaths were kept by the government, from July 1837 to the present day. The following link provides access for Aberdeen:


 * Births, Marriages, and Death Records for Sheffield


 * Ancestry.com


 * Yorkshire BMD records

CENSUS RECORDS
Census records for Aberdeen can be found using the following link:


 * Aberdeen Census Records

PROBATE RECORDS
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over Sheffield. Please follow the link below:


 * Sheffield Probate Records

CEMETERIES AND GRAVES
There are 2 cemeteries and one crematorium in the area of Sheffield. The link follows:


 * Sheffield cemeteries and crematorium

Other useful sites follow:


 * City Road cemetery


 * City Road cemetery


 * Burngreave cemetery


 * Sheffield Cathedral

GENEALOGY SOCIETIES AND GENEALOGY

 * Sheffield and District Family History Society


 * Aberdeen and North East Scotland Family History Society


 * Rootsweb Yorkshire Genealogy


 * Genuki for Yorkshire