Croston, Lancashire Genealogy

England Lancashire  Lancashire Parishes

See a List of Chapelries in Croston Parish



Parish History
Croston is a village and civil parish in Lancashire, England between Chorley and Southport and is next to the River Yarrow. St. Michael's and All Angels' Church is at the centre of the village.

Croston St Michael and All Angels is an Ancient Parish in the county of Lancashire.Other places in the parish include: Ulnes Walton.

Croston began in the 7th century when St. Aidan arrived at the riverside settlements. In the absence of a church, a cross erected as a place of worship. Croston gets its name from 'cross' derived from the Irish and the Scandinavian word 'tun' which means town (cross-town). It is unique as there are no other Crostons in the UK.

Centuries ago the parish of Croston was far larger than it is today[citation needed]. It included Chorley, Much Hoole, Rufford, Bretherton, Mawdesley, Tarleton, Hesketh Bank, Bispham, Walmer Bridge and Ulnes Walton. A charter granted by Edward I in 1283 permitted an annual medieval fair and market to be held on the village green. Ancient maps also depict a castle which is believed to have been of a wooden construction because there is no evidence of a stone structure.

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.

"CROSTON St Michael, a parish, and formerly a market-town, in the unions of Chorley and Wigan, hundred of Leyland, N. division of the county of Lancaster; comprising the townships of Bispham, Bretherton, Mawdesley, and Ulnes-Walton, 6½ miles west from Chorley. Croston anciently formed one of the most extensive...[parishes] in the county. At various periods...it has been divided into six independent parishes, viz.: Croston; Hoole, separated in 1642; Chorley, and Rufford, detached in 1793; and Tarleton, and Hesketh with Becconsall, detached in 1821. At Bretherton and Mawdesley are [also]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

Lancashire Online Parish Clerks
An extremely useful resource for research in Lancashire Parishes http://www.lan-opc.org.uk/

Church records
Online Records

Croston Parish registers and those chapelry registers of its 4 chapels of ease have mostly been transcribed and posted online at the following web sites:

Other important considerations:

Prior to the year 1821 Hesketh with Becconsall served as a chapelry only (a small subdivision of the parish of Croston). It became a full-fledged parish by act of Parliament in 1821. Searches for ancestry prior to this year, must include searches in the Hesketh with Becconsall Chapelry registers which began in 1745, and Croston parish registers and those of its attached chapelries. The baptisms, marriages and burials for Croston Parish and its smaller chapelries are online for the following range of years:

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.

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