Chesterfield, Derbyshire Genealogy

England Derbyshire Derbyshire Parishes Chesterfield

Chesterfield St mary and All Saints (the crooked spire)

Parish History

Chesterfield St Mary and All Saints is an Ancient Parish and a market town in the county of Derbyshire. Other places in the parish include: Calow, Newbald, Newbold and Dunstan, Newbold and Dunston, Tapton, and Walton.

Chesterfield is perhaps best known for the "Crooked Spire" of its Church of Saint Mary and All Saints and is why the local football team is known as The Spireites.

The spire is both twisted and leaning, twisting 45 degrees and leaning 9 feet 6 inches (2.90 m) from its true centre.
The cause is probably because the spire was added to the tower by inexperienced craftsmen using unseasoned timber and insufficient cross bracing. The effect of sun also distorted the timber roof. When slate and lead tiling was added this increased the rate of bend and twist. It is probably the most recognisable church spire in the country. 

The living is a vicarage, valued in the king's books at £15. 0. 2½.; net income, £204; patron, the Bishop of Lichfield. The church is a spacious cruciform structure, principally in the decorated, but partly in the early, and partly in the later, style of English architecture, with a tower rising from the intersection, and surmounted by a grooved or channelled spire of wood covered with lead. The clerestory windows of the nave, and the east window of the chancel, are fine compositions in the later style; and in the south transept are a beautiful screen and rood-loft: there are two very antique monuments in the nave, and three in the chancel, to members of the family of Foljambe. The interior of the edifice was renovated in 1842, at a cost of £4000; and it now gives accommodation to 1800 persons

From:  A Topographical Dictionary of England (1848), pp. 576-586. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=50871 Date accessed: 02 April 2011.

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.

Church records

To find the names of the neighbouring parishes, use Jurisdictions 1851. In this site, search for the name of the parish, click on the location "pin", click Options and click List contiguous parishes

Derbyshire Record Office reference D643 has deposited registers Bap 1558-2005 Mar 1558-1994

Lichfield Record Office has deposited Bishop's Transcripts Bap 1665-1883 Mar 1665-1837  Burials 1665-1883 Missing Bap & Bur 1859

Contributor: Include here information for parish registers, Bishop’s Transcripts and other types of church records, such as parish chest records. 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

Contributor: Include an overview if there is any unique information, such as the census for X year was destroyed. Add a link to online sites for indexes and/or images. Also add a link to the Family History Library Catalog showing the film numbers in their collection.

Poor Law Unions

Chesterfield Poor Law Union, Derbyshire

Probate records

Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Derbyshire 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

Contributor: Add any relevant sites that aren’t mentioned above.