Sefton, Lancashire Genealogy

England Lancashire Lancashire Parishes

See a List of Chapelries within Sefton Parish

Parish History

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.

The church has been extensively renovated in ensuing centuries.

"SEFTON St Helen, a parish, in the union and hundred of West Derby, S. division of Lancashire; containing, with the townships of Aintree, Great and Little Crosby, Ince-Blundell, Litherland, Lunt, Netherton, Orrell with Ford, and Thornton, 7 miles  north of Liverpool. The parish extends seven miles in length and four in width. At Great Crosby, Seaforth, and Waterloo are separate district chapels; and the Roman Catholics have chapels" in several places within the boundary of this civil parish.

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

Lancashire Online Parish Clerks

An extremely useful resource for research in Lancashire Parishes http://www.lan-opc.org.uk/

Church records

Online Records (Under Construction)

Sefton 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:

 _{[ FS = FamilySearch.org; LOPC =  Lancashire Online Parish Clerk Project; FMP =  FindMyPast.co.uk; LBMD = Lancashire BMD.org.uk; AC = Ancestry.co.uk; FREG =FreeReg ]}
 

SEFTON ST HELEN PARISH (1597) Indexes
	Baptisms	Marriages	Burials
FS
LOPC	1597-1780, 1783-1856	1600-1783, 1813-1884	1783-1899
LBMD	None	1837-1950	None
FMP	None	1657-1775	None
AC	1597-1783	1597-1783	1597-1783
FREG	None	None	None
GREAT CROSBY ST LUKE Chapelry  (1749) Indexes
	Baptisms	Marriages	Burials
FS	1749-1869	None	None
LOPC	1749-1764, 1797-1869	None	1854-1869
LBMD	1837-1905	None	None
SEAFORTH ST THOMAS Chapelry  (1839) Indexes
	Baptisms	Marriages	Burials
FS			None
LOPC	1839-1937	1870-1939	None
LBMD	None	1870-1950	None
WATERLOO CHRIST CHURCH Chapelry  (1***) Indexes
	Baptisms	Marriages	Burials
FS
LOPC	None	None	None
LBMD	None	1870-1950	None

Original Records

The Lancashire Record Office at Bow Lane, Preston PR2 1RE, holds the original parish registers in its vast collections. Contact their website for contact information.

The Family History Library has microfilmed the parish registers and Bishop's transcripts of _____ parish for the years ____-____. These films are available for ordering/circulating and researching at any one of its satellite FamilySearch Centers worldwide.

Census records

Census records from 1841 to 1911 are available online. For access, see England Census Records and Indexes Online. Census records from 1841 to 1891 are also available on film through a FamilySearch Center or at the FamilySearch Library.

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