Place:Houghton Conquest, Bedfordshire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Houghton Conquest is a village and civil parish in Bedfordshire, England. The parish also includes the hamlet of How End. The village is located in the northern part of the Central Bedfordshire District, on the border with the Borough of Bedford. According to the UK census of 2011, Houghton Conquest had a population of 1,514.

Historically in the hundred of Redbornstoke, the name of the village originated from the Conquest family who held a manor and lands in the area from the 13th century to the 18th century. (The Houghton in Houghton Conquest is pronounced "how-ton".)

The Church of All Saints was constructed in the village during the 14th century, and is today the largest parish church in Bedfordshire. Features of interest include the wall paintings, sculpture, stained glass, benches and stalls.

The Conquest family owned Conquestbury, a large manor which was left to ruin when the family left the area. The Conquestbury manor house stood near the southeast end of the village on the ground now known as Bury Farm, adjacent to London Lane. Parts of the original house were used to build a house in the 1850s; this house now serves as a village shop.

Houghton House was also built in the area in approximately 1615. In 1794, Francis Russell, 5th Duke of Bedford stripped Houghton House of its furnishings and removed the roof. Today, the remains of Houghton House stand as ruins.

end of Wikipedia contribution

Houghton Conquest was originally an ancient parish in the Redbornstoke Hundred of Bedfordshire, England. It was an ancient parish with no subsidiary chapelries or townships.

It was made a civil parish in 1866 and in 1894 it became part of the Ampthill Rural District. From 1974 until 2009 it was part of the non-metropolitan Mid Bedfordshire District and after 2009 in the Central Bedfordshire District.

Research Tips

• The website British History Online provides three chapters of the Victoria County History Series on Bedfordshire. The first covers the religious houses of the county; the second and third provides articles on the parishes of the county. The parishes are arranged within their "hundreds".
• GENUKI main page for Bedfordshire which provides information on various topics covering the whole of the county, and also a link to a list of parishes. Under each parish there is a list of the settlements within it and brief description of each. This is a list of pre-1834 ancient or ecclesiastical parishes but there are suggestions as to how to find parishes set up since then. GENUKI provides references to other organizations who hold genealogical information for the local area. There is no guarantee that the website has been kept up to date and therefore the reader should check additional sources if possible.
• Bedfordshire family history societies are listed in GENUKI.
• The FamilyTree Wiki has a series of pages similar to those provided by GENUKI which may have been prepared at a later date and from more recent data. The wiki has a link to English Jurisdictions 1851. There is a list of all the parishes in existence at that date with maps indicating their boundaries. The website is very useful for finding the ecclesiastical individual parishes within large cities and towns.
• A Vision of Britain through Time, Bedfordshire, section "Units and Statistics" leads to analyses of population and organization of the county from about 1800 through 1974. There are pages available for all civil parishes, municipal boroughs and other administrative divisions. Descriptions provided are usually based on a gazetteer of 1870-72 which often provides brief notes on the economic basis of the settlement and significant occurences through its history.
• These two maps indicate the boundaries between parishes, etc., but for a more detailed view of a specific area try a map from this selection. The oldest series are very clear at the third magnification offered. Comparing the map details with the GENUKI details for the same area is well worthwhile.

• Map of Bedfordshire illustrating urban and rural districts in 1900 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time. Parish boundaries and settlements within parishes are shown.
• Map of Bedfordshire urban and rural districts in 1944 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time. Parish boundaries and settlements within parishes are shown. This is not a repeat of the first map. There were some changes in urban and rural district structure in the 1930s.

• Wikimedia Commons map of the post-1974 districts of Bedfordshire. The numbers will be linked to the districts on the WeRelate district pages.
• A map of the ancient divisions named "hundreds" is provided on each of the pages for the hundreds in Bedfordshire.