UNDERSTANDING BOUNDARIES

What is the difference between an ecclesiastical parish and a civil parish? Is a township the same as a hamlet? How have the roles and functions of these administrative units changed over time? Boundaries form a complex web in the landscape and it is easy to be confused when trying to make sense of the various units they define. This section provides some definitions.

Parish

The term parish is used for two quite distinct units of administration:

The ecclesiastical parish is a unit of church administration and taxation. The bounds of the ecclesiastical parish determine the church in which a person is baptised, buried and, in earlier times, to whom they paid tithes and other dues. In our Anglo-Saxon Investigation we consider when a system of parish units came into being.

Although the ecclesiastical parish is often of great antiquity, this is not always the case. In the middle of the nineteenth century many new churches were built to serve the increasing populations of urban areas. Conversely, in more recent times, the amalgamation of livings into larger parishes has, in some areas, been necessary.

The civil parish is the unit of local administration adopted by government for taxation and other purposes. Under a system developed by the Tudors, help for the poor became the responsibility of the parish. In the south of the country, this usually meant the ecclesiastical parish which then served both church and civil roles. However in the north where parishes were often very large, the unit adopted was the township and the parish continued to function purely as an ecclesiastical unit.

Townships and hamlets

The farming landscape divided the resources of arable fields, meadows, pastures, woods and rough grazing land between communities in a system of land units known as townships. A parish could contain more than one township as was frequently the case in the north. In the south of the country single township parishes were more common. Sub-divisions of townships were called hamlets. Although administratively part of their township, hamlets often contained their own individual field systems. Townships and hamlets gave way to modern civil parishes following a process of local government reforms beginning in the late nineteenth century.

Detached parts

Many parishes consisted of two or more geographically separate portions. Elements of a parish existing apart were called ‘detached parts’. Elements of other parishes included within a parish were called ‘foreign parts’. An effort was made in the 1880s to eliminate these for civil purposes. The detached parts were incorporated into the parish which surrounded them or with which they enjoyed the longest common boundary. These changes had no effect on the ecclesiastical constitution unless a separate order was made to that purpose.