Going Back Before the Parishes
Last week we explored the role of the parish in family history research — but the story doesn’t start there. Before parishes became the main unit of local administration, communities were shaped by manors and earlier land‑based jurisdictions.
A manor wasn’t a grand house, but a territorial and legal unit. It had its own courts, customs, and record‑keeping systems, often overlapping with later parish boundaries. This is why our ancestors sometimes appear in multiple jurisdictions without ever moving.
Understanding manors helps explain:
- Why parish boundaries can look so odd
- Why records for the same family turn up in different places
- How land, tenancy, and local justice shaped everyday life
Manorial courts — especially the court baron and court leet — handled land transfers, local justice, and community regulation. Their records often survive from the medieval period right through to the 1920s, and they’re a goldmine for genealogists working in areas with patchy parish registers.
These structures help us understand not just where people lived, but how they were governed, recorded, and remembered. For Welsh and Irish diaspora research, where township, manor, and parish layers often collide, this context is essential.
Next time, we’ll look at how these early structures evolved into the parish system we recognise today — and how civil administration added even more layers.
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