Place:Nailsea, Somerset, England

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia Nailsea (#15 on map) is a town in Somerset, England, 8 miles (13 km) southwest of Bristol, and 11 miles (18 km) northeast of Weston super Mare. The nearest village is Backwell (#2), which lies south of Nailsea on the opposite side of the Bristol to Exeter railway line. Nailsea is a commuter town with a population of 15,630 in the UK census of 2011 . The town was an industrial centre based on coal mining and glass manufacture, which have now been replaced by service industries. Nailsea is close to the M5 motorway and Bristol Airport, and its railway station, Nailsea and Backwell, has services operated by the Great Western Railway. Churches include the 14th-century Holy Trinity Church and Christ Church, which was built in 1843. [edit] History and culture Little is known of the area occupied by Nailsea before the coal mining industry began, although it was used as a quarry in Roman times from which pennant sandstone was extracted. The Romans otherwise ignored Nailsea from 40–400 AD, but left a small villa near Jacklands Bridge.

Nailsea's early economy relied on coal mining, which began as early as the 16th century. The earliest recorded date for coal mining in Nailsea was 1507 when coal was being transported to light fires at Yatton. By the late 1700s the town had a large number of pits. Around this time Nailsea was visited by the social reformer Hannah More who founded a Sunday school for the workers. The Elms Colliery (Middle Engine Pit), one of the most complete examples of an 18th-century colliery left in England, is now in disrepair. It has been designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument and is included in the Heritage at Risk Register produced by English Heritage. Remains of the old pits, most of which had closed down by the late 19th century as mining capital migrated to the richer seams of South Wales, are still visible around the town.

The coal mines attracted glass manufacturer John Robert Lucas, who in 1788 established the Nailsea Glassworks that became the fourth-largest of its kind in the United Kingdom, mostly producing low-grade bottle glass. The works closed down in 1873, but "Nailsea" glass (mostly made by glass workers at the end of their shift in Nailsea and at other glass works) is still sought after by collectors around the world.

Nowhere was a historical hamlet that existed on the west side of the town until 1967, until it was demolished for development.

The 15th-century Nailsea Court, southwest of the town, is a Grade I listed building.

Governance

The parish of Nailsea started out as a chapelry in the ancient parish of Wraxall which was part of the Portbury Hundred, one of the hundreds or early subdivisions of the county of Somerset. From 1894 until 1974 it was part of the Long Ashton Rural District.

In 1974, under the Local Government Act 1972, all urban and rural districts across England were abolished and counties were reorganized into metropolitan and non-metropolitan districts. In addition, this area of Somerset with the city of Bristol and part of Gloucestershire were declared a new county named Avon. Like other counties, it had non-metropolitan districts covering the more non-urban areas. The area directly south of Bristol and east to the border with Wiltshire was placed in the Wansdyke District, while the section west to the Bristol Channel was placed in the Woodspring District. The county of Avon only lasted until 1996. When it was abolished a slight restructuring of non-metropolitan districts occurred to allow those parts of Avon to return to Somerset and Gloucestershire.

Nailsea is now in the unitary authority of the North Somerset District.

Research Tips

• GENUKI page on Nailsea.
• The Somerset Heritage Centre (incorporating what was formerly the Somerset Record Office and the Somerset Local Studies Library) can be found at its new location at Langford Mead in Taunton. It has an online search facility leading to pages of interest, including maps from the First and Second Ordnance Survey (select "Maps and Postcards" from the list at the left, then enter the parish in the search box).
  The Heritage Centre has an email address: archives@somerset.gov.uk.
• Three maps on the A Vision of Britain through Time website illustrate the changes in political boundaries over the period 1830-1945. All have expanding scales and on the second and third this facility is sufficient that individual parishes can be inspected.

• Somerset Hundreds as drawn in 1832. This map was prepared before The Great Reform Act of that year. Note the polling places and representation of the various parts of the county.
• Somerset in 1900, an Ordnance Survey map showing rural districts, the boundaries of the larger towns, the smaller civil parishes of the time, and some hamlets and villages in each parish
• Somerset in 1943, an Ordnance Survey map showing the rural districts after the changes to their structure in the 1930s

• Maps provided by the National Library of Scotland are also very useful. This map is currently set to an area now in the Sedgmoor District as it existed in the late 19th century, but can be moved to anywhere in the county using a variety of background maps. There is a very good search facility.
• A Vision of Britain through Time has a group of pages of statistical facts for almost every parish in the county
• GENUKI gives pointers to other archive sources as well as providing some details on each parish. The emphasis here is on ecclesiastical parishes (useful before 1837)
• A listing of all the Registration Districts in England and Wales since their introduction in 1837 and tables of the parishes that were part of each district and the time period covered with detailed notes on changes of parish name, mergers, etc. The compiler has gone to a lot of work to provide this material. Respect his copyright.
• The FamilySearch Wiki for Somerset provides a similar but not identical series of webpages to that provided by GENUKI
• English Jurisdictions, a supplementary website to FamilySearch outlining local parish boundaries in the middle on the 19th century. The information provided is especially useful for establishing the relationship of the ecclesiastical parishes in large towns and cathedral cities.
• The Victoria History of the Counties of England – History of the County of Somerset, produced by The Institute of Historical Research at the University of London is a scholarly website with articles tracing the history of individual parishes which are sorted into their hundreds, the early subdivisions of the county. It traces the ownership of estates and manors, describes the local church in detail, and usually provides a map of each parish. The volumes for Somerset are much more recent than those for other counties. It appears to be a work in progress, only covering about half the county so far. A map of the places covered in the series is given in Volume 6, but 3 more volumes have been published since then. If a parish is included there will be a note in its Research Tips.
• The Somerset and Dorset Family History Society
• The Weston super Mare Family History Society
• The Bristol and Avon Family History Society
• A list of all Somerset parishes with online transcripts of parish registers The size of Somerset makes this a huge project. If it does not yield what you are looking for, try getting in touch with the organizer with patience and politeness.
• Somerset Online Parish Clerk project home page
• A collection of West Somerset Parish Register Transcriptions are online courtesy of Martin Southwood