Heapey, Lancashire Genealogy

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

Chapelry History
Heapey (St Barnabas) was created a chapel of ease by 1711, lying within the boundaries of Leyland parish of the Borough of Chorley, N. division of the county of Lancaster, 2¼ miles (N. N. E.) from Chorley. Heapey contains also the township of Wheelton. Heapey Chapel was built by the year 1737. The original building was built at some point prior to 1552 and was enlarged in 1740 and 1829.

The following is taken from Kelly's Directory of Lancashire for 1924:

"Heapey is a township and with part of Wheelton constitutes an ecclesiastical parish, formed out of the ancient parish of Leyland, near the high road from Chorley to Blackburn, 8½ miles south-west from Blackburn, and 9 miles (14 km) south-east from Preston, it is in the Chorley division of the county, hundred of Leyland, petty sessional division of Leyland hundred, union and county court district of Chorley, rural deanery of Leyland, archdeaconry of Blackburn and diocese of Manchester. The Leeds and Liverpool Canal passes on the west. The church of St. Barnabas, standing on an eminence and erected previously in 1552, was enlarged in 1740, 1829 and 1867; it now consists of chancel, nave and transepts; the church was restored in 1876 and 1898: there are 600 sittings. The register dates from the year 1833, all entries prior to that date being registered at Leyland. The living is a vicarage, net yearly value £330, including glebe and residence, in the gift of the vicar of Leyland, and held since 1910 by the Reverend David Smith Bennard, B.A., of London University. Lady Sinclair, the trustees of Mrs. Paulet and Mrs. Sumner Mayhew are the principal landowners. The soil is of a mixed nature, partly light and clayey; subsoil, stone. The land is chiefly in pasture. The area is 1,466 acres (6 km2), of which 31 acres (130,000 m2) are water; rateable value £6,330; the population of the township in 1921 was 515, and of the ecclesiastical parish in 1911 2,405. Sexton Edward Hunt"

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/

Online Records

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

 Church of England 

Heapey chapelry's registers of christenings, marriages and burials, along with those of the ancient parish of Leyland to which it is attached, have been mostly transcribed and are displayed online at the following web sites and ranges of years:

For a full list of all those chapels surrounding Heapey and comprising the whole ancient parish of Leyland to which it was attached, be certain to see "Church Records" on the LEYLAND ST ANDREW PARISH page.

Non Conformist Records

 * 1717 England & Wales, Roman Catholics, 1717 at Findmypast ($), index and images (coverage may vary)
 * 1647-1996 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index (dates may vary by parish)

Catholic

 * 1628 - 1628 List of Recusants in Wheeleton and Heapey (p. 183)

Poor Law Unions
Chorley 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.

Taxation

 * 1665 - Lancashire Hearth Tax: Leyland Hundred, Heapey. E 179/132/351, The National Archives. Microfilm:.

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

Websites
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=53014 British History online Heapey