Help section

Search by places

This form allows you to search for places mentioned in cases. To perform a places search, fill in as many or as few of the following fields as you wish - no fields are mandatory - and click on the 'Search' button at the bottom of the screen.

If you make a mistake and wish to start again, clicking on the 'Clear' button at the bottom of the screen will present you with a new blank form.

Country

To select a country, click on the down arrow at the right hand side of the box and select the appropriate option from the list which will appear by clicking on it.

County/territory

To select a county/territory, click on the down arrow at the right hand side of the box and select the appropriate option from the list which will appear by clicking on it.

Place

Most places are towns, manors, parishes, or a combination of towns and parishes. They can, however, also be natural features such as rivers, forests, hills or woods, or administrative units such as prebends, baronies, dioceses, hundreds, lordships or wards, e.g.

N.B. Place names are rendered using the modern spelling where possible. Sources used for identifying places include the 1961 Census Index of Place Names, supplemented, for individual English counties, by the volumes published by the Place Name Society.

If a place name is followed by the phrase '(unid)', this indicates that the place has not been identified during the editorial checking procedure.

Location

Locations are defined as places within a place, such as buildings, streets, market-places, etc. Farms are also counted as locations, e.g.

Helpful Hints

If you attempt a search for a place and do not find what you are searching for, despite being certain of your information, please be aware that searches will fail unless they match completely the contents of the database. It may therefore be necessary to try searches on several different versions of the place you require, e.g. a search on 'Reading' will not find those instances where a parish has been included as part of the place name, such as 'St Mary, Reading', 'St Giles, Reading', etc.

To help with this problem it is possible to undertake wildcard searches in the place field by adding an asterix before, after, or before and after a portion of the place name in which you are interested, e.g.

It should be noted, however, that using the wildcard '*' will slow down response times considerably.

Advanced Searches

If you wish to perform a search combining fields in this form with those in any of the other four search forms, follow the advanced search instructions