Place:Minety, Wiltshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Minety is a village located in north Wiltshire, between Malmesbury and Swindon. Minety takes its name from the water mint plant found growing in ditches around the village, and has previously been known as Myntey.

Minety is one of the places located in the Crownthorne and Minety, the ancient Gloucestershire Hundred. This hundred was a detached part of Gloucestershire located in the southeast corner of Malmesbury Hundred in Wiltshire. (See this map of the Wiltshire Hundreds.)

The area of the Crownthorne and Minety Hundred was transferred to Wiltshire in 1844. The parish boundaries between Minety and the neighbouring parish of Oaksey underwent some alteration after Minety joined Wiltshire.

The village is divided into Upper Minety, with St Leonard's church, and Lower Minety (or simply Minety) which grew after the railway arrived. The civil parish includes the hamlets of Brandier, Lower Moor and the former hamlet of Sawyers Hill, now part of Minety village.

Swill Brook forms part of the northern boundary of the parish and joins the infant River Thames a short distance outside the parish, near Ashton Keynes.

Captain Giles Penn, Merchant Venturer out of Bristol, and Jeanne Gilbert (of Yorkshire), grandparents of the Quaker, William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania were inhabitants of Minety. This statement in the Minety article in Wikipedia does not agree with the article on William Penn in Wikipedia.

Research Tips

• Victoria County History - Wiltshire - Vol 14, pp14:176-186 - Parish: Oaksey. British History Online. University of London. The amount of information about Minety in standard sources is extremely limited.
• From this Ancestry page you can browse the Wiltshire parishes which have parish register transcripts online, quite often from very early dates. However, reading the early ones requires skill and patience. Transcriptions should also be in FamilySearch.
• A further collection of online source references will be found on the county page for Wiltshire.