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Villages and hamlets to GRO registration districts - useful websites


Keith_history_buff

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This is something of a moving target, given that registration districts change their boundaries periodically.

I have found it useful to try and determine for a given date the district in which a village pertained to, for a given soldier who lived there.

If you find the person on the 1911 Census, and are using FindMyPast, the transcript will show the respective registration district. Similar data is contained within the descriptions in TNA's Discovery. A search for Aberdare brought back the following, and it tells me that it is in Merthyr Tydfil.
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/results/r?_dss=range&_sd=1911&_ed=1911&_ro=any&_q=aberdare+AND+RG+

I have found the following website to be rather useful, given that it lists villages by their county. In some instances, the entry for the village will state the registration district. (This is recorded on the page for Llanhennock, Monmouthshire.) Here is a link to a County, and an index of associated towns, villages, hamlets etc. 
https://ukga.org/wales/Glamorgan/towns/index.html

I have also used the following websites in the past, too.

https://www.ukbmd.org.uk/reg/gla.html

https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/wal/GLA

There is some more modern data available, in spreadsheet format, for a fee. I have no link with this enterprise, but am considering purchasing their list in future. (It was recommended to me by a person who has undertaken a lot of research on the places of birth of men on the 1911 Census, and has made bubble plots on maps.) More details to follow, for anyone similarly interested.






 

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There is a market out there for modern geographic data, rather than the historic data freely available from the websites above.

This site is providing a list of over 48,000 settlements, not only in England & Wales, but in Scotland and Northern Ireland too. As a sample of what is out there, it is possible to download for free the data for settlements beginning with A.

https://www.townslist.co.uk/

For Aberdare, it makes a contemporary classification of it as a town. The table records the local government area, the modern county and its NUTS region. This is of slight interest to the amateur historian. Of greater interest are the associated LAT LONG coordinates, to 5 decimal places, which would allow for map plotting. Also of interest are the following data points: OS_grid_reference, easting, northing, elevation

Whilst I am still sourcing data on a project, there is a likelihood that I will purchase this, and use a lookup to match LAT LONG coordinates to the recorded birth places of the men that I have researched.

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  • 9 months later...

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