Atherstone House History Project: References

Unless otherwise specified, all references preceded by B, CR, D, HR, L, MR are to be found at the Warwickshire County Record Office. Uncatalogued items there are prefixed with WCRO.

Abbreviations for other record offices

• CRO: Coventry Record Office
• Dug: Dugdale Muniments held at Merevale Hall, Atherstone. Access to this archive is via an approach to the Warwickshire County Record Office initially. Documents have been used by permission from the late Sir William Dugdale.
• Lamb: Lambeth Palace Library
• LJRO: Lichfield Joint Record Office. (This is the archive holding wills and inventories)
• LRO: The Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland
• SCRO: Staffordshire County Record Office
• SBT: Shakespeare Birthplace Trust
• TNA: The National Archives in Kew, (formerly the Public Record Office)

Other references

• Census: Records for 1841 and 1851 are entered in the survey, but some later censuses have also been entered, particularly for the north-west side of Long Street from Church Street to the west end of town ( F39 to C120, Files 19 and 20).
• MPR: Mancetter Parish Register, (original held at Warwickshire County Record Office, copies available at some libraries)
• Sale: Charles Hanson Sale’s Scrapbook, (unpublished, in private ownership). Also see Warwickshire County Record Office reference CR1130/3 for miscellaneous papers of ‘Charles Hanson Sale, local historian, early 20th C.’
• Deeds: Abstracts of those in private ownership are available at Warwickshire County Record Office, reference Z1134(sm)/1. They have been given a reference in the survey, but originals are not generally available to the public. However, deeds for 120 Long Street (C85) are deposited with the Warwickshire County Record Office. They are listed on the house history page as WCRO Deed 120LS and as such are uncatalogued. These deeds also relate to C56, C57, C58, C64, C81, C82, C83, C84, C85, C87, F27, C88.
• Probate: PCC Wills, (those proved at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury), are held at the National Archives at Kew (TNA). These tend to be the wills of the better off and those with property in more than one county. Other wills and inventories are to be found at Lichfield Joint Record Office (LJRO), which holds the probate documents for the diocese of Lichfield. This includes the parish of Mancetter, within which was the manor or township of Atherstone.

Printed histories

• Bartlett: Bartlett, Benjamin. The History and Antiquities of the Parish of Mancetter (London, 1791)
• Dug Hist: Dugdale, William. The History and Antiquities of the County of Warwickshire (London, 1656, reprinted with maps, 1765)
• Nichols: Nichols, John. The History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester, Vol IV, Part II (London, 1811, reprinted 1971)
• W & W: Watts, Brenda and Winyard, Eleanor. The History of Atherstone (Keele, 1988)
• Also cited: Atherstone: A Pleasantly Placed Town, ed. Alcock, Nat and Hughes, Margaret (Chichester, 2008)

Other printed sources

• Charity Warks: Charity Commissioners, The Charities of the County of Warwick: Reports (London, 1839)
• Hearth: Arkell, T. with Alcock, N. Warwickshire Hearth Tax Returns: Michaelmas 1670 (Dugdale Society, 2010)
• Walker, Margaret (ed). Hearth Tax Returns, Vol I: Hemlingford Hundred: Tamworth and Athertone Divisions (Warwickshire County Records, 1957)¹

Directories

• Kelly’s Directories
• PO Post Office Directory 1845
• Pigot’s Directory 1828/9
• British Directory 1793
• Whites Directory 1850

¹ Both of these sources for the Hearth Tax have been used but the 1670 transcript by Arkell and Alcock is the most reliable.