Stoke Prior, Worcestershire
Historical Description
Stoke Prior, a village and a parish in Worcestershire, on the Birmingham and Worcester Canal, 2 miles SSW of Bromsgrove, with a station, called Stoke Works, on the M.R., and a post office under Bromsgrove; money order office, Stoke Works; telegraph office, Stoke Works railway station. Acreage, 3835; population of the civil parish, 2795; of the ecclesiastical, 1410. Finstall forms a separate ecclesiastical parish constituted in 1868. Population, 1385. There is a parish council consisting of fourteen members, seven being elected by each of the two wards into which the parish is divided. Finstall Park, Rigby Hall, and the Grange are chief residences. The Stoke Prior Saltworks cover about 30 acres, and comprise four borings. There are flour mills, a stone quarry, and the M.R. waggon works. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Worcester; net value, £243 with residence. Patrons, the Dean and Chapter of Worcester. The church ranges from Norman to Perpendicular, and has a fine Early English tower. It was restored in 1895 at a cost of about £5000. There is a reformatory for boys.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
Ancient County | Worcestershire | |
Ecclesiastical parish | Stoke-Prior St. Michael | |
Hundred | Oswaldslow | |
Poor Law union | Bromsgrove |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Civil Registration
For general information about Civil Registration (births, marriages and deaths) see the Civil Registration page.
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Stoke Prior from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Stoke-Prior (St. Michael))
Land and Property
The full transcript of the Worcestershire section of the Return of Owners of Land, 1873.
Maps
Online maps of Stoke Prior are available from a number of sites:
- Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- Google Streetview.
- National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
- OpenStreetMap.
- old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
- Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)
Newspapers and Periodicals
The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Worcestershire papers online:
Visitations Heraldic
The Visitation of Worcestershire 1569 is available on the Heraldry page.