Ardwick, Lancashire Genealogy

Chapelry History
Ardwick St Thomas is a chapel created in 1740.

ARDWICK, a township with two ecclesiastical district chapels, including St Thomas and St Silas--both lying within the parish and borough of Manchester, union of Chorlton, hundred of Salford, S. division of the county of Lancaster, 1 mile (S. E. by E.) from Manchester. St Thomas Chapelry was built by the year 1740.

The chapel of St. Silas' was built in 1841. The Wesleyans and Independents have places of worship; and there is a public cemetery of eight acres, opened in 1838.

By the year 1880, Ardwick township had at least four chapelries built within it, and all resided within the parish boundary of, and under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Manchester Cathedral (Our Lady, St George &amp; St Denys).

Civil Registration
Birth, marriages and deaths were kept by the government, from July 1837 to the present day. The England 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/ for both the post-civil registration time period (after 1837) and especially for finding ancestry in the pre-1837 time period.

Church records
Online Records

Ardwick is one of about 150 chapels comprising the whole of Manchester Parish's boundary (by 1880). The 'mother' or ancient parish of Manchester City is Manchester Our Lady, St George and St Denys Cathedral, which see (below).

If you do not locate your ancestor in the above chapelry links above and in Manchester Cathedral links (below), and before researching in any other Lancashire parish, you must include a thorough search into  all  of Manchester City's attached chapelries (over 150 of them)! Unfortunately, Manchester Cathedral (the parish) is England's largest parish thus each chapelry baptisms, marriage and burial registers (where extant) must be searched. To see and then search what's online for each one of Manchester City's chapelries and district churches--view a complete list of all its chapels HERE (scroll down to "Church Records").

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