Longdon, Staffordshire

Historical Description

Longdon, a parish in Staffordshire, 1½ mile S of Armitage station on the L. & N.W.R., and 4 miles NNW of Lichfield. It contains the village of Brookend, which is central, the village of Upper Longdon, and the straggling hamlet of Gentleshaw-aggregately so long that an old rhyme says that a beggar cannot beg through them on a summer day- and it has a post and telegraph office under Rugeley; money order office, Rugeley. Acreage, 4545; population of the civil parish, 1338; of the ecclesiastical, 933. Under the Local Government Act of 1894, the parish is divided into two wards-Longdon with six parish councillors, and Gentleshaw with three. The manor, with Beaudesert Park, belongs to the Marquis of Anglesey. Lysways, Longdon Hall, Longdon Lodge, The Grange, Broughton Hall, and Gorton Lodge are other chief residences. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Lichfield; gross value, £350 with residence. Patron, the Bishop of Lichfield. The church is partly Norman and partly Perpendicular, has a Norman doorway and a fine Norman arch dividing the nave and chancel, and contains an altar-tomb of J. Forster, Esq., who died in 1860. A portion of the parish is included in the ecclesiastical district of Gentleshaw, constituted in 1840. There are a Congregational chapel at Longdon Green, a Wesleyan chapel at Upper Longdon, and almshouses with a matron for nine poor women.

Administration

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

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

Church Records

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

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 Longdon from the following:

• Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Longdon (St. James))

Land and Property

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

Maps

Online maps of Longdon 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:

• Staffordshire Advertiser
• Tamworth Herald
• Lichfield Mercury
• Staffordshire Sentinel
• Wolverhampton Chronicle and Staffordshire Advertiser

Villages, Hamlets, &c