Childwall, Lancashire Genealogy

England Lancashire  Lancashire Parishes

Parish History
CHILDWALL (All Saints), a parish, partly in the union of Prescot, and partly in that of West Derby, hundred of West Derby, S. division of the county of Lancaster; comprising the chapelries of Aigburth, Garston, Hale, Wavertree, and Much Woolton, and the townships of Allerton, Childwall, Halewood, Speke, and Little Woolton; the whole containing 10,714 inhabitants, of whom 186 are in the township of Childwall, 4¼ miles (E. by S.) from Liverpool. Childwall is supposed to comprise the name of the Saxon chieftain by whom it was first occupied. The manor was held in the 13th century by the de Grelles and Delawarres; subsequently by the de Hollands, de Lathoms, and Sotheworths; and in the 15th century by the Stanleys, from whom it was sequestrated during the war of the Commonwealth. It afterwards became the property of the Le Greys, who sold the manor in the 18th century to Mr. Green, of Liverpool; and more lately it came to the Gascoynes. The heiress of the last-named family married the present Marquess of Salisbury, who assumed, in consequence, the name of Gascoyne. The parish is bounded on the west and south by the river Mersey, to which the rivulets of Childwall are tributary, and comprises by computation 14,870 acres, of which 680 acres are in Childwall township. The soil is various; in the higher lands a light clay upon red rock, in some few parts sandy, and in the remainder a reddish marl alternated with blue clay. The Manchester railway passes about a mile to the north of the church. Childwall Hall (which, with nearly the whole of the township, is the property of the Marquess of Salisbury, and entailed upon his second son,) is the splendid residence of John Shawe Leigh, Esq., and is in the castellated style, after a design by Nash; the park and grounds are in beautiful taste, and the scenery forms a panorama almost unrivalled in beauty and extent. The living is a vicarage, valued in the king's books at £5. 11. 8.; net income, £456; patron and appropriator, the Bishop of Chester. The church has some early English piers and decorated windows, but the greater portion is of modern date: the tower is handsome, surmounted by a spire, and of neater stonework than the rest of the edifice. Six other livings are maintained in the parish. There is an endowed school; and various bequests have been made for charitable uses. A cell of monks, here, from the monastery of Up-Holland, had the great tithes before the Reformation. Jeremiah Markland, son of a rector of the parish, a learned critic and classical scholar, was born at Childwall in 1693.

From: A Topographical Dictionary of England by Samuel Lewis (1848), pp. 593-597. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=50873 Date accessed: 25 June 2010.

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
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Census records
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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.

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Web sites
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