The wiki now has pages for ecclesiastical units in England and Wales. You can drill down from the Church of England to find provinces, dioceses, archdeaconries and rural deaneries. The relationships in this hierarchy are all referenced to Ecton’s Liber Valorum with links to page images at the Internet Archive. Parishes in London and Southwark will be added within the next few weeks. Parishes in other towns and cities that were divided into more than one parish will follow eventually, but I don’t know how long it will take. I have no plans to import rural parishes because I think settlements will be adequate for record linkage.

From now on I’m going to keep importing as much data as I can but I will also stop promoting the project for a long time because it’s still not ready to get much attention, and trying to keep people interested is too much of a distraction for me. I would rather do things in the order and at a pace that’s most convenient for me. This means that I won’t be posting much on this blog unless I want to share something especially important, and I’ve deactivated the project’s Twitter account. I hope that I’ll be ready for a big relaunch in the autumn of 2022, but it might take even longer if unexpected things happen. Meanwhile, the wiki and Github repository will still be available and will still be updated every so often.

Covid interferes with everything eventually but it has only interfered with this project in a very indirect way: I needed new glasses and I waited to get vaccinated before booking an eye test. Then when I got new glasses, I had to  get used to varifocals. That’s all out of the way, and I’m making progress with the wiki again.

First of all, I’ve imported a few hundred more pages. These are mostly streets and buildings in London. We also have a page for every cathedral in England and Wales.

Some other changes that have been made in the last few months: Continue reading →