FamilySearch Wiki:WikiProject English parishes

This is a child WikiProject of WikiProject England with a focus on improving the articles about the many hundreds of English parishes.



Scope
Articles about English parishes. As WikiProjects for different English counties are created this project will work in conjunction with those projects on parish articles for each specific county.

Contributors

 * Steve
 * Nathan - I am working on developing coverage charts for parish registers available online.
 * User:DowneOPC working on deposited records at Bromley Archives, Kent as part of Kent Online Parish Clerks
 * Phil - I work on adding parish descriptions to pages

Parish History
This section should be written using multiple sources.


 * Add a general overview of the history of this parish. It can be a few sentences or a couple of paragraphs. If it is a few sentences put the expansion box in this section to encourage a more lengthy history.

The aim of the parish history section should be to explain the ecclesiastical and civil parish history of the place and subsequent administrative and boundary changes. It should also reflect parish creations from an original Ancient Parish and identify how 19th and twentieth century population growth altered the approach to meeting the spirtual needs of parishioners. Links to Wikipedia projects for churches and places of worship in some English counties are a valuable resource (often illustrated and with geo map co-ordinates to locate the sites) In many counties images and other information can also be found and linked.

The aim should be to cater for an international beginner readership as well as the experienced researcher. It is also useful to locate other faiths within a Church of England parish boundary. The Church records section on the page can then develop description of the archive holding the deposited records or indicate if the records are still held in the parish by the incumbent

Resources section
A link to Family History Library catalogue may fit well in this section.

Section Headings
Add section headings as needed and subheadings; Add any section heading for material you want to add or use existing headings. Ideas for Topic Headings
 * Civil Registration
 * Church History - Example: Identify redundant churches and link to the Churches Conservation Trust site or identify if the deconsecrated building is now in use as a private residential dwelling, commercial premises or conserved.
 * Church Records - Example: Genealogical Society of Utah microfilm or digital images may represent only a small part of record sources held in archives in various locations. If possible an indication of the arrangement of original surviving records and condition can be offered. Downe, Kent offers such descriptions.
 * Nonconformist Records
 * Census Records
 * Statistical Census Data
 * History
 * Nineteenth Century
 * Twentieth century
 * Probate Records
 * Maps & Gazetteers
 * Websites

Census records
While developing a parish page you have the option of using a template. You may want to just use the text found in the template. If your not familiar with the parameters of a template you may want to avoid using them. Feel free to replace a template with text. Include in this Section - Include an overview if there is any unique information, such as the census for X year was destroyed. Add a link to online sites for indexes and/or images or a wiki article with those links. Add a subject link to the Family History Library Catalog. Add a link to a wiki census article.

Census Templates

 * Template:British Census  -
 * Parameters - census film number
 * Template:British Census2 -
 * Parameters - Parish name; census subject; internal link
 * Template:Suffolk Census -
 * Parameters - see template

Maps and Gazetteers
Add links to the various county and national directories; Notable gazetteers should be listed in the 'Maps and Gazetteer' section and could include a brief extract of the entry.

Church Records
This section requires expansion with: Information about parish registers, Bishop’s Transcripts, parish chest records, non conformist and other types of church records. Also add links to online parish collections. Make reference to records found in the FHLC.

Standard key to England parish register website abbreviations:

Example parish register coverage table:

Images being uploaded

 * Flickr - source attribution template for images from Flickr
 * Geograph - source attribution template for images from Geograph
 * Information - general source attribution template for other images
 * Help:License templates

Infoboxes

 * Infobox England Jurisdictions - infobox with links to related jurisdictions