Places
This page highlights some of the main areas which has so far featured in our research. The map below shows the main cluster of Yardys in The Fens. Each number represents the number of households in a locality in 1841. Most were family groups but a few are individual Yardys, typically as servants or lodgers in another household.
In addition to this main cluster, there are isolated Yardys elsewhere. Below we highlight the main locations where Yardys were found in the 19th and early 20th century as they dispersed. There are links to external websites (links open in a new window) that give more information. These include GENUKI entries (19th century gazetteers), Wikipedia (modern), a community website, and a map (from Streetmap). In due course we will add a complete list of places, both in the UK and abroad, generated from our database.
The Fens
Locations in the fenlands of Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire and Norfolk. All are in Cambridgeshire unless stated otherwise.
- Doddington - A village a few miles south of March. Many census entries are listed under Donnington, but this is misleading since Donnington was the main parish and registration district which included March before it grew in the 19th century.
GENUKI :: Wikipedia :: Doddington Doings :: Map - Glatton - Once in Huntingdonshire and now Cambridgeshire, this small village 10 miles south of Peterborough is where some C17th records indicate the presence of three Yeardye families.
GENUKI :: Wikipedia :: Parish website :: Map - Huntingdonshire - This county does not now exist, but as well as Glatton (above), Yards were found at various times in the 19th century in Great Gidding, Stilton and Ramsey.
- Lincolnshire - There was some migration into Lincolnshire from both Whittlesey and Walpole St. Peter. Just over the border are the Suttons - Sutton St. Mary, Sutton St. James and Sutton St. Edmund. A couple of families settled in Spalding and individual families are found in the mid to late 1800s in Boston, Gainsborough and Louth.
- March - Now a sizeable town by the River Nene. A large cluster of Yardys were here, many living in the wet area south of the river then called The Sumps (now Little London). It suffered a lot in the cholera epidemic of 1849. Up to 1863 it was in the parish of Doddington.
GENUKI :: Wikipedia :: March Museum :: Map - Norfolk - This county saw migration in mostly from the Walpole cluster. They fanned out to Fitcham, then onwards to Norwich. Individual families were found in Downham Market and West Walton. Several families moved later to Yorkshire (see next section).
- Peterborough - This city (in Northamptonshire) saw only 2-3 Yardy families at a time and then not until after 1881. Most lived on the eastern side, such as the Whittlesey Road, from whence they had come.
- Walpole St. Peter - one of two adjoining villages in Norfolk (the other is Walpole St. Andrew) 5 miles north east of Wisbech. It has a magnificent church, said to be one the finest parish churches in England, which saw the baptims, marraiges and buirals of several Yardys.
GENUKI :: Wikipedia :: St. Peter's Church :: Map - Whittlesey - 5 miles south east of Peterborough on the River Nene. The location of one of the two big clusters of Yardys in 1841. Many of the male Yardys worked in the brickworks. Later dispersion was into Peterborough itself, Spalding and further afield.
GENUKI :: Wikipedia :: Whittlesey Web :: Map - Wimblington - a village between Doddington and March, from where a couple of Yardy families migrated. One couple lived in the village schoolhouse in 1911.
GENUKI :: Wikipedia :: Wimblington & Stonea Council Web :: Map - Wisbech - A significant town also on the River Nene which is here tidal. Several Yardy families moved into Wisbech and the neighbourhood (Walsoken, Elm) from Walpole St. Peter. There was also onward migration to nearby Terrington St. Clement and also Yorkshire.
GENUKI :: Wikipedia :: Wisbech Town Council :: Map
Further Afield
As the Fenland clusters of Yardys dispersed during the latter part of the 19th century, they are found in other parts of England and abroad. Here are the main regions in the UK inot which Yardys migrated.
- Yorkshire - Settlement in Yorkshire started around 1860 but really only gathered pace in the 1880s and 1890s. Yardys were found quite widely across the country - Acomb, Aston-cum-Aughton, Brampton, Knottingly, Manningham, Skinningrove and at the turn of the 19th/20th century in the major cities of Leeds, Rotherham and Sheffield. The Yardy count in the 1911 census was 28, more Yardys than then lived in any of the Cambridgeshire clusters.
- London - inevitably the big city attracted Yards from the countryside. But there are suggestions of Yardys in London from early times. Our tracing of the Fenland clusters showed migration into the southern suburbs of Bromley, Deptford, Lambeth and Southwark; the west end at Marylebone; the east end at Camberwell, Limehouse, Mile End and Poplar; and on the northern fringe Edmonton. Altogether the Yardy count was highest at the 1901 census at 29.
- Other Locations - These are very varied and range from Derbyshire, Durham, Essex, Lancashire, Leicestshire, Portsmouth and Surrey, amongst other. The number of Yardys peaked in 1891 at 28.
This page last updated 22nd February 2013