Margaret Turner reports that her 4xGreat Grandfather, James Elliott was a 55 year old agricultural labourer living in Long Town, Coleshill, at the time of the 1841 census. With him were Ann Elliott (49), Caroline (20) and William (19). She asks: Could you please tell if there are any records that may find their marriage and any more children l have found Caroline and William (my 3xgf) marriages in Amersham, Bucks which is next to Coleshill but when l asked for records (Aylesbury R/O ) for Coleshill, they say they would be in Herts. Where is Long Town?

The problem is that Coleshill (see the new Coleshill web page) is not a parish and did not have a parish church - or even a Church of England chapel at the time you are interested in. It is extremely unlikely that anyone living in Coleshill would have been baptised, married or buried in Hertfordshire just because Coleshill was legally part of Hertfordshire. If you cannot find baptism or burial records in the adjacent Buckinghamshire parishes this is far more likely to be because the family did not patronise the Church of England. I suspect that the situation is similar to that in Hertfordshire where a significant proportion of the population were non-conformists, and unfortunately no records have survived and tracing the family further back is difficult if not impossible.

I can't help with Long Town. Coleshill was tiny and I have checked maps from Dury and Andrews in 1766 to modern street and walking maps of the area. The nearest name to "Long Town" is "Luckings Farm" which is not a good fit. As you say the information comes from a census you may be able to work out where it comes from by using the approach in Locating Census Addresses on Maps.

While there may be a few specialist records in HALS relating to Coleshill, I would have thought that the majority of records will be in the Bucks Records Office. You could try contacting HALS by email to ask whether they have any relevant records.

If you can add to the information given above tell me.

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