Spital Boughton, Cheshire Genealogy

Guide to Spital Boughton, Cheshire ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
BOUGHTON (Spittle), an extra-parochial tract, in Great Boughton district, Cheshire; contiguous to St. John Baptist parish within Chester city.

The area known as Boughton or Spital Boughton is an extra parochial place.

The adjoning areas of Boughton Heath and Vicars Cross lie within the separate civil parish of Great Boughton, which is outside the boundaries of the city of Chester.

In medieval times the area was home to Spital Boughton, a community which grew around a Leper hospital founded there in the 12th century by Ranulph de Gernon, 2nd Earl of Chester. The word (ho)Spital gave Spital Boughton its name.

The inscription is visible from the road: St Giles Cemetery. Here stood the leper hospital and chapel of St Giles. Founded early in the 12th century and endowed by successive Norman earls of Chester they remained in constant use until 1643. The cemetery remained to mark the site and in time the little village of Spital Boughton clustered around it. In 1644 the royalist defenders suffered great loss of life in a gallant sortie in Boughton and many of the fallen were buried here. Being extra parochial the site was granted to the corporation by Charles II in 1685. The last burial took place in 1854.

Church records
Spital Boughton 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 Cheshire Archives and Local Studies.

Non Conformist Churches
None

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

Registration Districts

 * Great Boughton (1837-69)
 * Chester (1870-1998)
 * Cheshire West (1998-2007)
 * Cheshire (2007-09)
 * Cheshire West &amp; Chester (2009+)

Poor Law Unions
Tarvin (previously Great Boughton) 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

Websites
Spital Boughton township (see Chester) on GENUKI