Melling, Lancashire Genealogy

Guide to Melling, Lancashire ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish register transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

See A List of Chapelries in Melling Parish

Parish History
Melling St Wilfrid (formerly St Peter) near Hornby is an Ancient Parish in the county of Lancashire.

Other places in the parish include: Botton, Melling with Wrayton, Wrayton, Wennington, and Roeburndale. It should not be confused with Melling (near Liverpool), Lancashire in the same county.

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. Here is an 1848 historical perspective by the topographer Samuel A. Lewis on this parish:

"MELLING (St. Peter), a parish, in the hundred of Lonsdale south of the Sands, N. division of the county of Lancaster; containing, with the two chapelries of Arkholme with Cawood, and Hornby, and the townships of Farleton, Roeburndale, Wennington, and Wray with Botton, and the township of Melling with Wrayton, 11 miles north and east from Lancaster. At Arkholme, Hornby, and Wray, are separate chapels.

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

Online Records

 * 1538 - 1910 at FamilySearch — index
 * 1603 - 1910 at FamilySearch — index and images

Melling 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 web sites below and for the following ranges of years:

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.

Taxation

 * 1665-1667 - Lancashire Hearth Tax: Lonsdale Hundred, Melling. E 179/132/352, The National Archives. Microfilm: . Includes Arkholme, Bottin, Farleton, Hornby, Melling with Wrayton, Roeburndale, Wray.

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