Kirkham, Lancashire

From FamilySearch Wiki

Revision as of 05:39, 4 January 2013

England Lancashire Lancashire Parishes

Here is A Comprehensive List of Kirkham Parishes and Chapelries.

Parish History

Kirkham St Michael is an Ancient Parish and a market town in the Armounderness deanery of the Diocese of Manchester in the county of Lancashire.

Other places in the parish include: Whittingham, Wharles, Brown Moss, Bryning with Kellamergh, Esprick, Great Plumpton, Greehalgh with Thistleton, Greenalgh with Thistleton, Greenhalgh, Larbreck, Little Eccleston, Little Eccleston with Larbreck, Little Ecclestone with Larbrick, Little Plumpton, Medlar with Wesham, Newsham, Newton with Scales, Roseacre, Roseacre and Wharles, Thistleton, Treals, Treals, Roseacre and Wharles, Westby, Westby with Plumpton, Westby with Plumptons, and Ballam.

The Diocese of Blackburn is a Church of England diocese, covering much of Lancashire, created in 1926 from part of the Diocese of Manchester. The Diocese includes the towns of Blackburn, Blackpool, Burnley, and the cities of Lancaster, and Preston, as well as a large part of the Ribble Valley.

The church is a Grade II* listed building. It is an active Anglican parish church in the diocese of Blackburn, the archdeaconry of Lancaster and the deanery of Kirkham.

The earliest evidence of a church on the site is in 684AD. The fabric of the present church dates from 1822 when the nave, designed by Robert Roper, an architect from Preston, was built. The cost of the nave was £5,000. In 1844 the tower and spire, designed by the Lancaster architect Edmund Sharpe, were added at the west end. In 1853 the chancel was rebuilt, probably by Joseph Hansom, to make the altar visible from the nave. The north and south galleries were removed in the middle of the 20th century and the area under the west gallery has been turned into a separate room. In 2004 it was discovered that the spire had developed structural problems because the iron ties reinforcing the stones had corroded. An appeal to repair the spire was launched and the work is now complete.

"KIRKHAM St Michael, a market-town and parish, in the union of the Fylde, hundred of Amounderness, N. division of the county of Lancaster west by north of Preston."^[1] 

Resources

Civil Registration

Birth, marriages and deaths were kept by the government, from July 1837 to the present day. The civil registration article tells more about these records. There are several Internet sites with name lists or indexes. A popular site is FreeBMD.

Online index of Lancashire Births, Marriages and Deaths Lancashire BMD

Church records

Online Records

Kirkham St Michael's parish registers and those registers of all of its smaller chapelries lying within its boundaries have been mostly transcribed and are displayed online at the following web sites and ranges of years:

Original Records

Original copies of the parish registers for Kirkham St Michael and its attached smaller chapelries' registers are held at the Lancashire Record Office, Bow Lane, Preston, PR2 1RE.

In addition, the Family History Library, at FamilySearch in Salt Lake City, UT, U.S.A. also has microfilm copies of these originals and these may be circulated to any one of its 4,600 satellite FamilySearch Centres worldwide.

Add the contact information for the office holding the original records. Add links to the Family History Library Catalog showing the film numbers in their collection

Census records

Census records from 1841-1891 are available on film through a Family History Center or at the Family History Library. The first film number is 306886. To view these census images online, they are available through the following websites for a fee ($) or free:

• FamilySearch has some of the British Censuses available.
• FindMyPast ($) has all available census records including images, and is free at Family History Centers and the Family History Library and some public and academic libraries.
• Ancestry.co.uk ($) has now all available census records but free at Family History Centers and the Family History Library and at numerous public and academic libraries. The library versions are known as AncestryInstitution.com.
• The Genealogist.co.uk ($) has all available censuses and is free at Family History Centers and the Family History Library and various other libraries.
• FreeCen is a UK census searches. It is not complete and individuals are always asked to consider helping out with transcriptions.
  

Poor Law Unions

Fylde Poor Law Union, Lancashire

Probate records

Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Lancashire Probate Records to find the name of the court having primary jurisdiction. Scroll down in the article to the section Court Jurisdictions by Parish.

Maps and Gazetteers

Maps are a visual look at the locations in England. Gazetteers contain brief summaries about a place.

• England Jurisdictions 1851
• Vision of Britain

Web sites

This section requires expansion with: any relevant sites that aren’t mentioned above..

References