I Started researching my family's history in 2005, concentrating on my maternal great grandmother's line, the Buxton family, who had been farming in Rushton for at least 300 years. While carrying out research at the County Record Office, I started to notice the same names repeatedly appearing in my research, and I began to wonder how all these families interlinked and, how the community as a whole would have been affected by historical events. How did the Civil War affect the people of Heaton, Rushton James and Rushton Spencer? What effect did the Black Death have on the population?

My focus had started to move away from that of my family line in isolation and broadened out to embrace the community as a whole, and the events that would have helped to shape it.

Early in 2006 a read an article in one of the family history magazines about someone who had carried out extensive research into the genealogy of a village, then in the June 2006 edition of The Midland Ancestor I read a feature on Online Parish Clerks (OPC), which gave me the final concept for this website. Instead of publishing the findings from my research, I have decided to publish the raw material used for that research wherever possible, in the hope that it will be of use to those who have an interest in the same area as myself but may be looking for answers to different questions than those that I have asked.

The only limitations on what material that is placed on this website will be; my limitations, for example I am unable to read Latin and the amount of time I am able to dedicate to this project at anyone time. Copyright issues, I have no intentions of putting anything online unless I have permission to do so. Cost, this site is funded by myself and while I do not object paying for the server (the website would not exist if I did), or travelling and other expenses incurred during research, I cannot afford to pay any fees to have material published on website.

Transcription of old hand written documents is a thankless task and, while effort has been made to transcribe data as accurately as possible, achieving 100% accuracy is simply not a realistic target. So where ever possible the document reference number has been included with the transcription to facilitate consultation of the source material.