Friarmere, Yorkshire Genealogy

Guide to Friarmere, Yorkshire ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
Friarmere St Thomas is an Ecclesiastical Parish in the county of Yorkshire, created in 1795 from Rochdale St Chad, Lancashire Ancient Parish.It was in the Rochdale deanery of the Diocese of Manchester from 1847.

The church is also known as Heights Chapel. A simple mid 18th century church on a hillside overlooking Delph. The church was built beginning in 1765, probably using the labor of the parishioners, who dubbed it 'Heights Chapel'. It was intended as a chapel of ease for parishioners unable to travel to the parish church at Saddleworth, Yorkshire.

St Thomas' is a very plain brick building, two storeys high, with a small stone bell-cote at the west end. It is very much in the style of a Georgian 'preaching church', with galleries on the west, north, and south, and a small east sanctuary lit by an Italianate window.

When a new church was built in Delph most of the interior furnishings were transferred there, leaving St Thomas' fairly bare. The modern Friarmere St Thomas parish is in the Saddleworth Team benefice, Oldham East Deanery, Rochdale Archdeaconry of the Diocese of Manchester

The church was deconsecrated and is now in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust who undertook building work during 2010

FRIERMERE, an ecclesiastical district, in the chapelry of Saddleworth, parish of Rochdale, Upper division of the wapentake of Agbrigg, W. riding of York, 1 mile (N.) from Delph. The church, dedicated to St. Thomas, is a plain edifice, consecrated in 1768. The dissenters have two places of worship. There are places of worship for Independents at Delph, Upper Mill, and Spring-head; and for Wesleyans at Delph, Upper Mill, and Bagulay.

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

Church records
Friarmere parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

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

Records are also available at the West Yorkshire Archive Service.

Poor Law Unions
Rochdale Poor Law Union

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