> It looks quite tiny really, but then the congregation must have been very > small even if everyone in the parish went to church. Has anyone ever looked > at recusant records for parishes in south western Herefordshire? I wondered > whether, in such a conservative area, there may have been folk still holding > to the old religion. Hi Maureen, Your comment about the old religion reminded me of a book I came across a few years ago - "Whitsun Riot" by Roland Mathias. It was published in 1963 and is "an account of a commotion amongst Catholics in Herefordshire and Monmouthshire in 1605" Although it doesn't seem to mention Kenderchurch in the text, it does describe a "recusant belt" as stretching from "Sugwas, north of Wye, where the Bishop's Palace had been in the 13th century, and Whitecross, where the saintly Thomas de Cantilupe rested on his journeys between Sugwas and Hereford, through Allensmore (of which John Seaborne of Sutton St Michael, a well-known Catholic, was landlord) southwards through Kilpeck, Dore and Wormbridge to Skenfrith, Garway and Llanrothal in the valley of the Monnow." So that puts it in the right area. And I have just noticed that Kenderchurch is shown on the map of the Northern area of commotion. I haven't read all of the book properly - there are a lot of notes/references, and many names, so it is one I plan to go back to when I get around to trying to sort out the PARRYs at that time, but it might be interesting to give some idea of life then, as well as perhaps suggesting other reference sources for recusants. It does quote Rowland Vaughan of Whitehouse (in 1609/10) saying that there were five hundred poor living within a mile and a half of his house in the Golden Valley, who supposedly made a living from spinning hemp and flax, but who also begged, pillaged and gleaned. Mathias also mentions a J.P. Malcolm visiting the area in the first decade of the 19th century and still finding large numbers of "tumbledown huts, wretchedly constructed of clay and sods and branches, which, with vegetable patches and animal-runs, proliferated among the waste on either side of the road. The squatters had evidently gleaned their way through ten generations". I thought some of my ancestors had a hard life, knowing that they were paupers, removed from Llanwenarth back to Clodock in 1848 - but at least there are some stones left to show the houses they lived in. I doubt there is much evidence left for those described above. Best wishes Barbara Griffiths Coventry UK http://homepage.ntlworld.com/im.griffiths/parryfamilyhistory/parryhome.htm