Lancashire Parishes: Difference between revisions

Critically, and unlike all other England counties (except Cheshire, parts of West Yorkshire, Greater London and most big cities), identifying, listing and then researching Lancashire's parishes used to require that <u>you</u>&nbsp;perform a study to identify <u>''all''</u> chapelries attached to each ancient parish. Until now, this was quite difficult to accomplish, and yet a ''crucial step&nbsp;''in order to conduct thorough research in Lancashire. This is because it required using several reference aids, guides and tools to compile comprehensive, a thorough list, many of which are not conveniently available to the researcher. Each Lancashire parish averaged close to 8 chapelries (additional separate churches with baptism and etc., registers) each. The biggest challenge is Manchester--which is the largest parish in England with its 150-plus chapelries lying within its boundary!&nbsp;<u>'''''No''''' ''single'' reference aid, tool, or source is complete or accurate in identifying all chapels of ease within each ancient parish.</u> However, here in the Lancashire Wiki pages, you will find that this task has been done for you with all the chapelries identified and listed <u>for</u> you. How is this done? You will note that each chapelry page "Parish History" precisely indicates to which ancient parish to which it is attached. Conversely, each Parish page identifies by name each and every chapelry lying within its boundary. As new and the hard-to-find chapelries come to light, they are added to the "Comprehensive List of Chapelries" (see link to, found at top of each ancient Parish page).  

''After completing research in the ancient parish registers, be certain to ask yourself if you have also searched in the church registers of each chapelry attached to that parish (as listed in the "Comprehensive Lists" of parishes and chapels). To not follow this strategy in your research will result in less-than thorough searching, and failure to solve your research problems or objectives. These lists will greatly aid you as you attempt to progress your research into surrounding, contiguous parishes and their respective attached chapels, and so on. Aside from the sheer magnitude of its population, incomplete lists of chapels and chapelries ''lying within an ancient parish boundary is one of the major reasons many researchers have decades-old 'brickwall' research problems in tracing ancestral lineages in Lancashire!  

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