PARISH REGISTERS

Parish Registers

After the Reformation in 1538 by edict of Thomas Cromwell, Chancellor to Henry VIII, parish churches were obliged to keep details of baptisms, marriages and burials. These were kept in loose-leaf form and not many survive to this early date.

However, in 1597, under the reign of Elizabeth I, a law was introduced whereby these were to be bound in parchment books, and that all the loose-leaf records were to be transcribed onto parchment, at least back until the commencement of her reign in 1558. These became known as Parish Registers

Elizabeth also required her ministers to copy entries in these registers annually to the Bishop. These became known as Bishop's Transcripts. Bishop's Transcripts can be very valuable where parish registers have been lost.

There is a brief gap in the registers between 1653-1666 (The Commonwealth Period), when under Cromwell's Government a brief period of Civil Registration was introduced. Hardly any of these records survive. There also seem to be lots of missing baptisms and marriages in the records throughout the whole period when Republicanism and Nonconformity were rife.

The next change to take place was the "Hardwicke Marriage Act", "An Act for the better prevention of Clandestine Marriage", which came into force in 1754 and lasted until the introduction of Civil Registration in 1837. From now on it became compulsory for all marriages to take place in the official Parish Church, Banns were to be read on three separate occasions before the marriage took place, and the marriage register was to be signed by both parties and witnessed by two witnesses. This meant that marriages could no longer take place in nonconformist churches. Quakers and Jews were deemed to have kept adequate records and were exempt from this act.

In 1813 under George Rose's Act, printed register books were introduced to standardise the entries. This, is some cases, meant losing some of the information that had previously been entered into the registers by meticulous parish priests. Here are some examples from my own family tree, which are taken from the Hyde Gee Cross Unitarian Chapel's registers:

5th October 1777, baptism of Tabitha daughter of David Jackson of SPOUT HOUSE, Gee Cross.
1st March 1807, baptism of Ann the daughter of Richard Cartwright and Ann his wife the daughter
of David and Tabitha Jackson, born 1st February 1807.
20th February 1829, Martha daughter of Joseph and Ann Cartwright of Werneth.

So the records from 1813 onwards, although standardised, often miss out on some useful information they previously contained. In fact the registers at Old Chapel, Dukinfield, during the imcumbency of Samuel Angier 1677-1713, often read like a diary, with entries such as "Queen Anne was crowned this day", and "There have been floods these past five months in Stalybridge".

The next change came about with the introduction of Civil Registration in 1837. The recording of baptisms and burials remained the same, but marriage registers now took exactly the same form as the local Registrar's records. As a result of this, if you are definitely sure your ancestors married in a Church of England Church or in a non-conformist Chapel by an Approved Person (after 1899), it is possible to search for this record on the microfilm of the parish register and to pay 50 pence for a copy at Tameside Local Studies Library, rather than applying to the local registrar and paying 7.00 pounds.

Also during the time of "Hardwicke's Marriage Act 1754-1837", there were only two parish churches in Tameside where marriages could take place, Ashton St Michael, and Mottram St Michael. Marriages in Dukinfield and Hyde were officially supposed to take place at Stockport St Mary's.


To check which parish registers are available on microfilm to view at Tameside Local Studies Library click here to visit their website. You will need to telephone in advance to book a film reader. A lot of church graveyards were cleared of gravestones in the 1970's and 1980's, and most of the Monumental Inscriptions from these are also preserved at Tameside Library. To understand some of the original parish boundaries, there is a Parish Map circa 1750 on this webpage.

If you wish to view Parish Registers for other areas of the country and cannot or do not wish to travel, Parish Registers from all over the world are available to order to view at the Mormon Family History Centre on Patterdale Road. Click Here for more details.

Click here to view the holdings at Manchester Central Library and Oldham Local Studies Library.

There are some notable gaps in local records e.g., Old Chapel Dukinfield's registers are missing between 1713-1764, which is a great loss since Old Chapel, although nonconformist, was virtually Dukinfield's parish church at this period.

For a period between 1800 and 1840, the Church of England was very unpopular locally and the district was steeped in nonconformity. For this reason a lot of Tameside people chose to marry at Manchester Cathedral, where fewer questions were likely to be asked about regular church attendance etc. People also often chose to use accommodation addresses in Manchester during the period when the Banns were read in order to avoid paying fees at both the Bride and Groom's Parish Churches. These and other reasons led to the popularity of the Cathedral for weddings. Some people even took days trips to Manchester on Saturdays just to watch the succession of weddings.

The earliest records to survive in Tameside are at Mottram Parish Church dating back to 1559.

Several early parish registers have been transcribed, indexed and printed in book form by the Lancashire Parish Register Society (LPRS). These are available at Tameside Local Studies Library and include:



Saddleworth St Chad's available in two volumes published in 1891 covering the years 1618-1751 and 1751-1800. These also include Baptisms and Burials from the Chapels of Heights, Dobcross, Lydgate and Saddleworth-cum-Quick.

Stockport St Mary's Available in book form, published by Bulkeley and filed at L923 in Tameside Local Studies covering Baptisms, Burials and Marriages 1584 -1619. Tameside Local Studies also have a marriage index for 1799 - 1837 on microfiche.



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