Go West volunteers research the story of the ancient ecclesiastical parishes of the area.
Civil parishes only came into being as a result of the Local Government Act of 1894 but the country started to be divided into parishes in late Saxon times and the process was complete in
Norman times.
Each parish was a bundle of land centred around a parish church. Today we call these parish 'ecclesiastical 'parishes, right up to the end of the 19th century the parish church stood at the
centre of local administration. To discover more about the story of any hamlet, village or town before 1894 t is to the parish records that researchers should turn.
