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Hampshire

This page offers hints for genealogy research in Hampshire.
Draft version
Introduction

Hampshire is in central southern England to the west of Sussex. Its main towns on the south coast are Southampton and Portsmouth which are both major ports. The ancient county also included Bournemouth but that was reorganised into Dorset in 1974. Winchester and Salisbury are well-known cathedral cities in Hampshire. In the north of the county Aldershot is a long established Army town and with Farnborough is a growing conurbation. Another expanding 'new' town in the north of Hampshire is Basingstoke.

The Isle of Wight is sometimes considered to be part of Hampshire but is actually a separate county and has its own Record Office. See the Isle of Wight page for more details.

Hampshire is often abbreviated as Hants. You may come across references in older documents to the county of Southampton, it used to be administered separately from the rest of Hampshire but this is no longer the case.

For research purposes there are three Record Offices. The main one is the Hampshire Record Office at Winchester. The HRO is the place to find most of the parish registers and many other records relating to parishes in the county of Hampshire. Hampshire has/had over 300 parishes (the Isle of Wight has an extra 32). Also manuscripts relating to the bishops of Winchester, which cover a wider area.

Southampton and Portsmouth have their own Record Offices which each have the records for their own city. Visit the Southampton City Archives and Portsmouth Record Office websites for more information.

The main society for people researching their Hampshire ancestry is the Hampshire Genealogical Society. The HGS offers the usual membership benefits of a quarterly magazine and the opportunity to register your research interests. It has also indexed the 1851 census and recently completed a burials index for the whole of Hampshire.

Other Hampshire Links

UK and Ireland Information Service - Hampshire
Hampshire GenWeb
Hampshire surname interests
Hampshire mailing list
John Owen Smith's site - lots of Hampshire links

The Hampshire Look-up Exchange is not currently available, it needs a new volunteer

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