Pilling, Lancashire Genealogy

England Lancashire  Lancashire Parishes



Chapelry History
Pilling St John the Baptist was created a chapel of ease by 1630 from and lying within the boundaries of Garstang, Lancashire Ancient Parish.

Pilling is an ancient settlement, founded on what was essentially an "island" with the sea on one side and marsh on the others.

Pilling is a village and civil parish within the Wyre borough of Lancashire, England. It is 6.5 miles (10.5 km) north-northeast of Poulton-le-Fylde, 9.4 miles (15.1 km) south-southwest of Lancaster and 14.5 miles (23.3 km) northwest of Preston, in a part of the Fylde known as Over Wyre.

The civil parish of Pilling, which includes the localities of Stake Pool, Scronkey and Eagland Hill.

The Older St John the Baptist was built in 1717. The only structural alteration since then has been the raising of the walls in 1813 to accommodate galleries. It became redundant when the new church was built in 1887.

St John the Baptist was built by the Lancaster firm of Paley &amp; Austin in 1885-87 at a cost of £7,000. It is a large church with a spire recessed in the west tower and replacement for the earlier church in the same churchyard. The old chapel founded in the fifteenth Century is now in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust.

Here is an 1848 historical perspective on Pilling Chapelry by topographer, Samuel A. Lewis; note that according to Lewis and again in John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales, Pilling was a chapelry attached to Garstang Parish; see also notes in FHLC:

"PILLING, a chapelry, in the parish and union of Garstang, hundred of Amounderness, N. division of Lancashire, 7½ miles (W. by N.) from Garstang; containing 1232 inhabitants. "Pilyn" was possessed by the abbey of Cockersand until the Dissolution, when Henry VIII. granted lands here to the Kitchin family of Hatfield, Herts, whose heiress conveyed them by marriage to Robert Dalton, of Thurnham, Esq. Frances, daughter of John Dalton (who died in 1777), brought Pilling by marriage to Humphrey Trafford, Esq., of Croston, from whose family it passed to several owners: the present lords of the manor are, Edmund Hornby, Esq., of Dalton Hall, near Burton-in-Kendal, and John Gardner, Esq., of Sion Hill, Bonds, near Garstang. The chapelry is on the shore of Morecambe bay, and comprises 2066 acres of arable land, 2062 acres meadow and pasture, 4 wood, 875 uncultivated moss, 381 green marsh, and 1500 acres sands occasionally overflowed by the tide. The surface is nearly level, and the soil of the improved land siliceous, with a clayey subsoil. A considerable portion of land has been reclaimed from the moss within the last forty years; and since Richard Cardwell Gardner, Esq., became the owner of the Brickhouse estate, Priest Cottage, and other valuable property in the neighbourhood, the township has been much improved, that gentleman having laid out a large amount with this object. Agriculture is the chief support of the inhabitants: a few families employ themselves in fishing. The living is a perpetual curacy; net income, £107, with a parsonage-house, built in 1830; patrons, E. Hornby, and John Gardner, Esqrs.; impropriators, Messrs. Standish and Benison, whose tithes, arising from 4598 acres of land, have been commuted for £665. The chapel is a plain structure, erected in 1719-21. There is a place of worship for Wesleyans. Robert Carter, in 1710, gave some property towards the support of a school, of which the income is now about £20 per annum. In the moss is some bog-iron ore; and considerable organic remains of the red-deer have been found in the silt under the clay here: many of these are in the possession of Mr. J. D. Banister."

From: A Topographical Dictionary of England by Samuel Lewis (1848), pp. 567-571. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=51213 Date accessed: 20 July 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/

Transcripts for this parish are available.

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
Garstang Poor Law 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
Add any relevant sites that aren’t mentioned above.

Churches Conservation Trust for old chapel http://www.visitchurches.org.uk/findachurch/st-john-the-baptist-pilling/?region=Lancashire