Austrey History

We are greatly indebted to Alan Roberts of Adelaide, South Australia, for sending us the bulk of his historical research on early modern Austrey for inclusion on the website. Alan was born in East Suffolk in 1945 where his father’s wartime service as an RAF instrument technician on East Anglian airfields gave him an early acquaintance with watchmaking and clock repairs. After migrating to South Australia in 1956 and working for awhile as a teacher, Alan developed a keen interest in English local history. He started studying for his Ph.D. at Adelaide University on the ‘Farming Inhabitants of Appleby and Austrey’ in the late 1970s, building on Dr Vivien Brodsky’s preliminary ‘family reconstitution’ of Austrey from the parish register. In 1978 Alan travelled overseas and enrolled as an ‘Occasional Student’ in the Department of English Local History at the University of Leicester, where under the guidance of Professor Alan Everitt and Charles Phythian-Adams, he continued research on his thesis in county record offices and local archive repositories. Alan got in touch with us through Kevin Skates of Austrey - himself a clock repairer and restorer - hoping the historical information might capture the interest of the present-day inhabitants of the parish. Most of the material relating to Austrey is directly drawn from original research. The 1793 Austrey enclosure map and 1840 Austrey tithe map are both available for viewing in the Warwickshire County Record Office, while the 19^th century Appleby Hall estate map showing part of Austrey can be found in the Leicestershire Record Office. Anyone wishing to get in touch with Alan can email him directly at: alnthad@yahoo.com.au. I am sure he would be glad to answer any questions. We hope that everyone will find something of interest among the historical information presented here, and perhaps through reading these accounts of the lives of Austrey’s earlier inhabitants feel some affinity with and sense of belonging to this ancient community

Steve Hamilton Elms Drive Austrey