Upper Arley, Worcestershire Genealogy

Guide to Upper Arley, Worcestershire ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
ARELEY, UPPER (St. Peter), a parish, in the union of Kidderminster, S. division of the hundred of Seisdon and of the county of Stafford, 4 miles (N. by W.) from Bewdley.

Upper Arley was formerly in Staffordshire, but was transferred to Worcestershire in 1895. The parish is unusual in being divided into two unequal parts by the river Severn. Woodeaves (west of the river) was formerly only linked to the rest of the parish by a foot ferry.

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.

Church records
Upper Arley parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

To find the names of the neighboring parishes, use England Jurisdictions 1851 Map. In this site, search for the name of the parish, click on the location "pin", click Options and click List contiguous parishes.

Records are also available at the The Hive (where the Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service is located).

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Worcestershire 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