Sefton, Lancashire, England Genealogy

England

Lancashire

Lancashire Parishes

Sefton

Guide to Sefton, Lancashire ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish register transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records. See a List of Chapelries within Sefton Parish

Sefton
Type	Ancient Parish
Civil Jurisdictions
County	Lancashire
Hundred	West Derby
Poor Law Union	West Derby
Registration District	West Derby
Records Begin
Parish registers	1597
Bishop's Transcripts	1619
Ecclesiastical Jurisdictions
Rural Deanery	Liverpool North
Diocese	Chester
Probate Court	Court of the Bishop of Chester (Episcopal Consistory)
Archive
Lancashire Record Office

Parish History

SEFTON (St. Helen), a parish, in the union and hundred of West Derby, S. division of Lancashire;containing, the townships of Aintree, Great and Little Crosby, Ince-Blundell, Litherland, Lunt, Netherton, Orrell with Ford, and Thornton.

Sefton is a village and civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton in Merseyside, England. Located to the south west of Maghull and to the north east of Great Crosby, it is on the flood plain of the River Alt. Historically a part of Lancashire, the name Sefton is thought to be derived from the Old Norse sef, meaning "sedge" or "rushes" and tún meaning "farmstead". In the past Sephton was an alternative spelling.
The Parish Church of St Helen (Church of England) - the only Grade I listed building in the Borough - was first built around 1170 as the private chapel of the Molyneux family.
St Helen's has gained recognition for its extensive carved Tudor woodwork, which Pollard and Pevsner describe as the "great glory of the church", and for its inclusion in Simon Jenkins' book, England’s Thousand Best Churches, and Clifton-Taylor's list of 'best' English parish churches.

A small, decorated chapel in the Norman architectural style is known to have existed by 1291,[2] when the building's worth was estimated at £26 19s 4d in the Valor of Pope Nicholas IV. No part of this original chapel exists today, however during building works at the East Window in the early 2000s, substantial Norman floor tiles were discovered and are now displayed in the Lady Chapel.

By 1320, the original building had been completely removed and replaced with a more contemporary Decorated Gothic structure, which incorporated a small nave with pointed, geometric tracery windows and pitched roofline. A West tower with angle buttresses, a cornice and parapet with beehive-shaped pinnacles and distinctive tall spire was also built adjoining it. The spire was partially rebuilt following damage by severe gales in 1802.

Resources

Find Neighboring Parishes

Use England Jurisdictions 1851 Map

• Type the name of the parish in the search bar
• Click on the location pin on the map
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• Click "List Contiguous Parishes" to find the neighboring parishes
  

Cemeteries

• 1940-2000 England, Lancashire, Sephton, Thornton Garden of Rest, Burial and Grave Register and Cremation Index(*) at FamilySearch Catalog - images

Civil Registration

Birth, marriages and deaths were kept by the government, from July 1837 to the present day.

• See England Civil Registration for online resources and information.
  
  

Online index of Lancashire Births, Marriages and Deaths Lancashire BMD

Church Records

The Church of England (Anglican) became the official state religion in 1534, with the reigning monarch as its Supreme Governor.
Non-Conformist refers to all other religious denominations that are not the official state religion.

Church of England

Chapelry is a church or churches built in a large ecclesiastical parish to help the members attend worship services closer to their homes.

Chapelries of Sefton

Great Crosby St Luke Chapelry - 1749 Seaforth St Thomas Chapelry - 1839 Waterloo Christ Church Chapelry

Online Parish Records Table

Due to the increasing access of online records:

• Individual parish coverage for databases in this table are inconsistent and should be verified
  
• Dates in the following table are approximate
  

Hover over the collection's title for more information

Sefton Parish Records
All Chapelries Found in Sefton are included in these links.
Collections	Baptisms		Marriages		Burials
	Indexes and images	Indexes only	Indexes and images	Indexes only	Indexes and images	Indexes only
FamilySearch Collections-Lancashire	1500s-1900s	-	1500s-1900s	-	1500s-1900s	-
Parish Registers-Lancashire	1500s-1900s	-	1500s-1900s	-	1500s-1900s	-
Bishop's Transcripts - FamilySearch Catalog	1700s-1800s	-	1700s-1800s	-	1700s-1800s	-
FreeREG	-	1500s-1900s	-	1500s-1900s	-	1500s-1900s
Findmypast-Lancashire ($)	1500s-1900s	-	1500s-1900s	-	1500s-1900s	-
Ancestry-Church of England BMD-Lancashire ($)	1500s-1900s	-	1500s-1900s	-	1500s-1900s	-
Ancestry-England & Wales, Birth, Christening, Marriage and Death Indexes ($)	-	1500s-1900s 1500s-1900s	-	1500s-1900s 1500s-1900s	-	1500s-1900s
Databases with Known Incomplete Parish Coverage
Boyd's Marriage Indexes-FMP (Free)	-	-	-	1500s-1800s	-	-
National Burial Index-FMP (Free)	-	-	-	-	-	1800s-1900s

Other Websites
These databases have incomplete parish coverage.

• Joiner Marriage Index - Lancashire ($)
• The Genealogist Parish Registers - Lancashire ($)
• UK Websites for Parish Records - Links to online genealogical records
• Online Genealogical Index - Links to online genealogical records
• OnLine Parish Clerks - Lancashire - OnLine Parish Clerks project for Lancashire

Nonconformist Records

"Nonconformist" is a term referring to religious denominations other than an established or state church. In England, the state church is the Church of England.

Census Records

Census records from 1841 to 1921 are available online. See England Census for more resources.

Poor Law Unions

West Derby, Lancashire Poor Law Union

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
  

Bibliography

Salter, Mark (2005), The Old Parish Churches of Lancashire, Malvern: Folly, pp. 72–73, ISBN 1 871731 69 0

Pollard, Richard; Nikolaus Pevsner (2006), The Buildings of England: Lancashire: Liverpool and the South-West, New Haven & London: Yale University Press, pp. 580–584, ISBN 0 300 10910 5
Clifton-Taylor, Alec (1974), English Parish Churches as Work of Art, London: Batsford, p. 246, ISBN 0 7134 2776 0

Due to contractual agreements, some images and/or databases on FamilySearch.org may only be viewed at a FamilySearch Center or FamilySearch Affiliate Library.

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England Databases (FamilySearch) - free

England, Lancashire Parish Registers, 1538-1910 (FamilySearch)

Digital images of Bishop's Transcripts are available in the FamilySearch Catalog

FreeREG - free

Lancashire Parish Registers Browse 1531-1991 (Findmypast) - ($)

Lancashire, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812 (Ancestry) - ($)

Various indexes of Birth/Christening, Marriage, and Death/Burial records are available on Ancestry.

England, Boyd's Marriage Indexes, 1538-1850 (Findmypast) - free

National Burial Index For England & Wales (Findmypast) - free

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