Shenstone, Staffordshire

Historical Description

Shenstone, a village and a parish in Staffordshire. The village stands on an eminence 3½ miles S by W of Lichfield, and has a post, money order, and telegraph office under Lichfield, and a station on the Birmingham, Sutton-Coldfield, and Lichfield branch of the L. & N.W.R. The parish contains also the hamlets of Catshill, Chesterfield, Footherley, Lynn, Littlehay, Little Aston, Shire Oak, and Stonnall, and comprises 8543 acres; population of the civil parish, 2681; of the ecclesiastical, 1033. The parish was divided under the Local Government Act of 1894: the urban part, which was in the Brown Hills local board district, was constituted a separate parish under the name of Shireoak; and the rural part was divided into three wards, Shenstone, Stonnal, and Little Aston, with a parish council consisting of nine members. Shenstone Court, Shenstone House, Shenstone Lodge, Shenstone Hall, Footherley Hall, Little Aston Hall, and Lynn Hall are chief residences. An ancient castle stood on a spot now called Castlefield. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Lichfield; gross value, £336 with residence. The present church was built in 1852, and contains some ancient monuments. Stonnall forms a separate ecclesiastical parish, and parts of the ecclesiastical parishes of Little Aston, Ogley Hay, and Walsall Wood are contained in Shenstone parish. There is a Wesleyan chapel.

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 Shenstone

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 Shenstone from the following:

• Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Shenstone (St. John the Baptist))

Land and Property

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

Maps

Online maps of Shenstone 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