England
& Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index |
The ParishThe parish of Ruardean lies in the extreme northwest of Gloucestershire forming a substantial stretch of the border with neighbouring Herefordshire. Ruardean is located roughly 8 miles northeast of the town of Monmouth and sits high on the northern edge of the Forest of Dean with superb views across to the mountains of Wales & the Wye valley to the northwest. Ruardean is a mid-sized village which sits roughly 2 miles north of the A4136 road which crosses the Forest of Dean from Monmouth eastwards to the A40, Ruardean also sits 2 miles east of the deeply incised valley of the Wye which performs a convoluted course of meanders deep within its valley. The economy of Ruardean would have been varied, forest products being a substantial part but underlying the forest is coal measures and some local extraction occurred supplementing the usual pastoral farming of the area. Much of the land to the south if Ruardean and within the forest was former Royal hunting forest with a history not too dissimilar to that of Hampshire's New Forest. Ruardean is drained the short distance westwards by small streams and brooks which feed into the nearby Wye which reaches the outer Bristol Channel through Chepstow. Ruardean is sited at around 200 metres above the sea in richly undulating and very picturesque landscape, Ruardean is fairly high but land continues rising to its southwest to reach just over 260 metres. By the standards of western Gloucestershire Ruardean parish was fairly small in acreage, covering around 1,600 acres it would have supported a population of just over 900 parishioners. In Domesday times Ruardean was a tiny and insignificant settlement, held by one William the son of Balderon it could muster just 3 ploughs. |
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Register No | Covering Dates | Deposited With | Register Style | Quality Standard | Comments |
1 | 23rd July 1754- 10th August 1776 | Gloucestershire Archives - Reference - P275/IN/1/3 |
Plain, ruled book containing combined Banns & Marriages | Grade 3 Register - there are sufficient quality issues with this register to indicate that some misreads will occur albeit few in number | This register suffers from a strange order of the entries and also from poor segregation of entries with little use of "white-space" - add in some poor handwriting and misreads are likely to have occurred |
2 | 10th February 1777 - 3rd September 1812 | Gloucestershire Archives - Reference - P275/IN/1/4 | Plain, unruled book containing combined Banns & Marriages | Grade 2 Register - not a perfect read but with a low likelihood of misreads | None |
3 | 14th August 1813 - 19th June 1837 | Gloucestershire Archives - Reference - P275/IN/1/9 | Standard Rose style preprinted and prenumbered Marriage register | Grade 2 Register - not a perfect read but with a low likelihood of misreads | None |
Walford
St Michael, Herefordshire
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Hope
Mansell St Michael, Herefordshire
Mitcheldean St Michael |
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Mitcheldean
St Michael
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Extra
Parochial area of the Forest of Dean
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Extra
Parochial area of the Forest of Dean
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1760 1770 1780 1790 1800 1810 1820 1830
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