Latest updates: November 2022 – eight directory extracts added to the Directories etc section of the website, from directories for 1868, 1870, 1885, 1900, 1905, 1922, 1929 and 1937. There are now 19 directory extracts for Waters Upton dating from 1851 to 1941. I have also improved navigation within the Directories etc section – you now have the option to click to move forward and backward through the pages in sequence from a menu under the page titles as well as using the drop-down menu under the page header.
About my Waters Upton One-Place Study
The churchyard of St Michael’s at Waters Upton is very small, with a correspondingly small number of graves. I visited it on 11 September 2011 to find the last resting place of my 3x great grandmother (Mary Titley, née Atcherley) and her husband. While there I decided to photograph all the gravestones and other monuments with legible inscriptions so that I could transcribe the inscriptions and upload the information and images to Find A Grave. I managed all but a few of the most recent graves before I ran out of space on my camera’s memory card.
As a family historian, I couldn’t just take photos, make transcriptions, upload everything and leave it at that. I was curious about all the people who were commemorated in the inscriptions I had photographed. So using BMD indexes, parish register data, census returns and other online resources I endeavoured to answer the question “Who do you think they were?”
After the Register of One-Place Studies (now the One Place Studies Directory) was set up, I registered my photographic and genealogical survey of Waters Upton St Michael’s graveyard as an OPS. Then, with the creation of this website, I expanded the Waters Upton One Place Study beyond the parish churchyard with census abstracts, extracts from historic trade directories, parish register abstracts (baptisms, marriages and burials run from 1700 into the 1800s), and other records – and there’s more to come.
I also joined the Society for One-Place Studies and more recently (at the Society’s AGM in November 2019) I ‘stepped up’ to do my bit for this small but invaluable organisation by joining its Committee and taking on the role of Social Media Coordinator. If you conduct a one-place study (or are thinking of starting one) do consider joining, taking part in the Society’s activities, and sharing your knowledge and experience with fellow members.
I used to fit my one-place study in (after a fashion!) with my Atcherley One-Name Study (see the Atcherley Family History website), but these days (my own health and that of my father permitting) it is a case of fitting the OPS in with my work for the Society – and my Atcherleys are feeling very neglected. Despite the competing claims on my time, I am beginning to analyse Waters Upton’s historical records, explore the family trees of the people named in them, and present my findings here.
I hope this website will prove to be of use or interest to at least some of the present-day descendants and relatives of those who once lived in this small Shropshire parish.
Steve Jackson
Waters Upton One-Place Study 
My 7xgt grandfather was John Wase. It was interesting to find a legible extract of his will and the sale of the farm animals & furniture by his grandson, also John.
The first John’s son Benjamin was also vicar at Waters Upton in the 1750’s
It’s nice to find all the information all in one place.
Regards
Paul
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Excellent website I have looked at it many times and find the information very useful, I maintain the St Michael’s Church website. I am very interested in the masthead photograph, I have a copy of it as a postcard in black and white, I am wondering how you have a coloured photo of it. The photograph was taken prior to 1959 when my family moved from Lower House Farm to the Beeches, which is the house on the left in the photograph, I am still living there now. The 1941 Kelly’s directory transcript does not show my grandfather Griffith Davies living at Lower House Farm, in the actual directory he is listed under John Brookes farmer, The Beeches.
A previous comment from Paul Davis mentions the Rev Benjamin Wase as vicar of Waters Upton , he was actually Rector of Great Bolas from 1745 to 1758.
Many thanks again for a website with a vast amount of information from your research.
David Williams
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Thanks so much for your feedback David! The masthead image is from a copy of the very same black and white postcard, which I scanned and then uploaded to the MyHeritage website to get it colourised. Have a look at my blog post “A Waters Upton Postcard” for more info – I will now have to update that post to confirm that the house on the left is, as I suspected, The Beeches!
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Hi, I am currently researching the Dodds who were born in Waters Upton – in particular Ann Dodd, born 1849. I couldn’t however find her in the baptism records although her brothers Thomas and Richard are listed (born 1842 and 1848) – would you be able to help? Anne married George Bowen and moved tot he Wirral and died in 1013 in Oxten, Birkenhead.
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I see you are way ahead of me with researching Ann Dodd, and I am now catching up (she is in my one-place study tree/forest on Ancestry but only partially researched). There no baptism for her in the Waters Upton register as far as I am aware, and Ann is not alone in that. There are several possibilities as to why that might be. She may have been baptised but the event was not then recorded in the register. I think this happened more often than we realise. She may have been baptised at a nearby non-conformist chapel, the records of which have not survived or have not been put online (but, given that her brothers were baptised at Waters Upton, it is not clear why that might be, if indeed that is what happened). She may not have been baptised at all as a child, through oversight or some other reason, with the possibility arising from that, that she was baptised elsewhere as an adult.
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