Berkshire Genealogy Resource Index

This map shows 'Old' Berkshire and the 'Poor Law Unions'

When looking at a modern map of "Berkshire", it is important to remember that it shows a boundary that was drawn in 1974 and erased 24 years later in 1998, and only referred to the administration of the county. Berkshire proper includes the Vale of White Horse, Abingdon and even parts of Oxford itself. The town of Slough has been administered as part of Berkshire since 1974.

Before 1974, Berkshire was:

... an inland county of England on the south bank of the River Thames, having Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire on the north, Hampshire on the south, Surrey on the south-east, and Wiltshire on the west. It is irregular in shape, with an extreme length of 43 miles from east to west, and an extreme breadth of 30 miles from north to south, and an area of 462,210 acres. There is a chalk ridge running through the county, joining the Chiltern Hills and the Marlborough Downs
...
The county has three parliamentary divisions (returning each one member), seven municipal boroughs, twenty hundreds, and one hundred and ninety-three parishes ...

Hundreds were formally replaced by district councils in 1894 but as far as Family Historians are normally concerned the 1841 Census was the last to work in Hundreds.

The historic castle and royal borough of Windsor require a special notice. Berkshire had a great share in the [English] Civil War, two battles having been fought at Newbury, Reading having been besieged, and attacks made on Windsor Castle, Abingdon and Donnington. There are many ancient churches with good examples of Norman and later architectural periods, and mitred Benedictine abbots lived at Reading and Abingdon respectively. (From Cassell's Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland, 1899)

Administration of Berkshire

Berkshire has been arguably ill-served by administrative boundary changes. In 1974, the county lost the Vale of the White Horse, including Wantage, Didcot, Wallingford and Abingdon, to Oxfordshire, but gained Slough from Buckinghamshire. An earlier boundary change assimilated Reading's growth north of Thames into Berkshire.

In 1998, the administrative county was divided into six unitary authorities, based on the existing districts of Newbury, Reading, Wokingham, Bracknell, Maidenhead and Windsor, and Slough.

updated 5th June 2001
rev 9th August 2003