Baswich or Berkswich, Staffordshire

Historical Description

Baswich or Berkswich, a township and a parish in Staffordshire. The township is united to two other tracts, under the name of Baswich, Milford, and Walton. It lies on the Stafford and Worcester Canal, 2 miles SE of Stafford, and it contains the post office of Milford under Stafford, and a sub-office at Walton, and has a station at Milford on the Trent Valley branch of the L. & N.W.R. The parish contains also the township of Brockton and that of Acton-Trussell and Bednall. Acreage, 2036; population of the civil parish, 625; of the ecclesiastical, 837. The living is a vicarage, united with the curacy of Walton, in the diocese of Lichfield; net value, £171 with residence. The church is a plain red-brick building, situated on the east bank of the river Penk. The vicarage of Acton-Trussell-with-Bednall is a separate benefice.

Transcribed from The Comprehensive Gazetteer of England & Wales, 1894-5

Administration

The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.

Ancient County	Staffordshire
Ecclesiastical parish	Baswich Holy Trinity
Hundred	Cuttlestone
Poor Law union	Stafford

Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.

Church Records

The register dates from the year 1601.

Findmypast, in association with the Staffordshire & Stoke on Trent Archive Service have the Baptisms, Banns, Marriages, and Burials online for Baswich or Berkswich

Churches

Church of England

Holy Trinity (parish church)

The church of Holy Trinity at Baswich, on the east bank of the river Penk and at the extreme north-west end of the parish, is a plain building of red brick, consisting of chancel, nave, north porch and a western tower of stone containing 3 bells: there an 350 sittings: at the entrance to the churchyard is a lych gate of oak erected in 1894, at a cost of £100, by Mrs. Spooner, in memory of the late Judge Spooner.

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 Baswich or Berkswich from the following:

Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Baswich, or Berkswich (Holy Trinity))

Land and Property

A full transcript of the Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Staffordshire is online.

Maps

Online maps of Baswich or Berkswich 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 Staffordshire newspapers online:

Villages, Hamlets, &c

Brockton or Brocton
Milford
Walton (Baswich)