Wray, Lancashire Genealogy

England Lancashire  Lancashire Parishes



Chapelry History
Wray was created an ecclesiastical district with a chapel in 1839 from, and lying within the boundaries of Melling, Lancashire Ecclesiastical Parish.

Other places in the parish include: the hamlet of Botton.

The Diocese of Blackburn is a Church of England diocese, covering much of Lancashire, created in 1926 from part of the Diocese of Manchester. The Diocese includes the towns of Blackburn, Blackpool, Burnley, and the cities of Lancaster, and Preston, as well as a large part of the Ribble Valley.

"WRAY, with Botton, a township, and an ecclesiastical district, in the parish of Melling, hundred of Lonsdale south of the Sands, N. division of Lancashire, 10 miles (N. E. by E.) from Lancaster, on the road to Settle; containing 718 inhabitants. In the reign of Edward I., Geoffrey de Neville had a grant of free warren here. The Pooleys of Wray, and the Tunstalls of Botton, ancient and reputable families connected with the township, no longer exist. The township comprises 3760a. 3r. 33p. of inclosed land, and about 2000 acres uninclosed; the surface is undulated, the soil clay in the higher parts, and alluvial in the lower, and the scenery picturesque: most of the land is good pasture and meadow. A bed of coal, eighteen inches thick, runs through the higher portion of the township; and there are two excellent flagstone-quarries. Wray is the most populous village in the parish, and Botton one of the highest and most remote situations in the county. The Roe-burn partly propels a silk-mill, and uniting with the Hind-burn, forms the Wray beck, a tributary of the Wenning, which last river enters the Lune below Hornby. The North-Western railway into Yorkshire is distant only about half a mile. The church, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, was built in 1839, on a site given by the Rev. W. E. Hoskins, of Margate; it is in the early English style, and cost £700. The living is a perpetual curacy, in the patronage of Five Trustees; net income, £90, with a house built in 1846. The Society of Friends and the Wesleyans have places of worship. Richard Pooley, in 1685, bequeathed £20 for the erection of a school, and £200 to purchase land for its support; the income is about £35, which sum, with about £4 per annum arising from a bequest by Mary Thompson in 1803, is applied in aid of a parochial school."

From: A Topographical Dictionary of England by Samuel Lewis (1848), pp. 692-695. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=51432 Date accessed: 03 August 2010.

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
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
http://www.1881pubs.com/ for details of public houses in the 1881 census

Poor Law Unions
Caton Gilbert Union,Lancashire

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

Web sites
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