Westbury-on-Severn, Gloucestershire Genealogy

Guide to Westbury-on-Severn, Gloucestershire ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
WESTBURY-upon-Severn (St. Peter and St.Paul), a parish, and the head of a union, in the hundred of Westbury, W. division of the county of Gloucester, 2½ miles (N. E. by E.) from Newnham. This place is bounded on the east and south by the river Severn, which is here crossed by a ferry to Framilode. Other places in the parish include: Rodley

The spire of the church is detached from the church, originally built as a watch tower around 1270 the wooden shingle roof was added in the 14th century.

Nothing remains visible of the earliest church buildings at Westbury. The first, dedicated to St Peter and St Paul and probably of wood. was built in the 8th century. Of the subsequent rebuildings the oldest work to be seen is from the early 13th century. village was very small, the parish of Westbury on Trym was a large one, stretching from the Filton boundary over to Shirehampton, across the Downs and into Redland and Kingsdown. The Beating the Bounds ceremony in the 1770s took two days - but this did include stops for refreshments!

The city of Bristol expanded in the 19th and 20th centuries, so churches were built in the new suburbs and the parish size was reduced. Over two hundred years later Westbury Church gained status as a joint cathedral with Worcester, thanks to Bishop Carpenter, whose stands in a niche on the west tower. The head has been restored.

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

To find the names of the neighboring parishes, use England Jurisdictions 1851 Map. In this site, search for the name of the parish, click on the location "pin", click Options and click List contiguous parishes.

Records are also available at the Gloucestershire Archives.

Poor Law Unions

 * Westbury on Severn

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