Birkenhead St James, Cheshire Genealogy

England Cheshire Cheshire Parishes  Birkenhead St James

Guide to Birkenhead St James, Cheshire family history and genealogy: parish registers (baptism, christening, marriage, and burial records), civil registration (birth, marriage, and death records), census records, history, wills, cemetery, online transcriptions and indexes, an interactive map and websites.

Parish History
Birkenhead, St. James, Laird Street/Hoylake Road. Built in 1858 as a chapel to St Mary, becoming a separate parish in 1876.

BIRKENHEAD, a seaport town, a market town, and a township, and seven chapelries, in the district of Wirral, Cheshire. The town stands on the Mersey, opposite Liverpool, about a mile by water W of Liverpool, and 14 3/4 miles by railway NNW of Chester. It comprises the ancient extra parochial district orchapelry of Birkenhead, the former township of Claughton, in Bidstone, and part of that of Oxton, in Woodchurch. They have been incorporated with the township of Birkenhead. The place was anciently called Bircheved, Birkete, Birket-wood, and Birkenhedde.

There are upward of thirty non-established places of worship (including Claughton and Oxton). There are two Roman Catholic churches. There is also a Mariners' church. St. James, was constituted in 1841.

Church records
Birkenhead St James parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials have been indexed by the following groups:

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

Registers of Baptisms 1865–1967 and Marriages 1869–1972 have been deposited at the Cheshire Record Office (no burials here) and they have been filmed by FamilySearch and are available for searching online.

Non-Conformist Churches

Civil Registration
Birth, marriages and deaths were kept by the government, from 1 July 1837 to the present day. The civil registration article tells more about these records. Here are two excellent Internet sites with birth, marriage and death indexes available:


 * FreeBMD
 * Cheshire BMD

Poor Law Unions
Wirral Poor Law Union, Cheshire

Birkenhead Poor Law Union, Cheshire

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Cheshire Probate Records to find the name of the court having primary jurisdiction. Scroll down in the article to the section Court Jurisdictions by Parish.

see also England Cheshire Probate Records (FamilySearch Historical Records)

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