Great Stanney, Cheshire Genealogy

England Cheshire  Great Stanney

Parish History
Stoak, St. Lawrence is an ancient parish church, originally serving the townships of Great Stanney, Little Stanney, Stoak or Stoke (near Chester) and part of Whitby. Great Stanney is an extra parochial place within the parish.

A Saxon chapel was originally on the site. It was not mentioned in the Domesday Book but fragments of architecture still present in the 19th century showed that a new church must have been built soon after the Norman conquest. Ormerod quotes sources from the 14th century which stated that at that time the church was "a sumptuous fabric of stone and wood, of great size, with four bells, but was then becoming ruinous". The present church dates from its rebuilding in 1827, undertaken by George Edgecombe (or Edgecumbe), and very little of the original work remains. A further restoration was carried out in 1911–12.

Great Stanney is a civil parish within the Cheshire West and Chester uitary authority.

In 1870-72, John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Stanney like this:

STANNEY (Great and Little), two townships in Stoke parish, Cheshire; 6 and 5 miles N of Chester. Acres, 950 and 797. Real property, £1,441 and £1,516. Pop., 65 and 204. Houses, 8 and 34. The property of Great S. belonged to Stanlow abbey; and that of Little S. belongs now to SirJ. F. Bunbury, Bart

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.

Registration Districts

 * Great Boughton (1837–69)
 * Chester (1870–1937)
 * West Cheshire (1937–50)
 * Chester and Ellesmere Port (1974–98)
 * Cheshire West (post 1998)

registration events may be searched online at Cheshire BMD

Church records
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.

Parish registers for Stoak 1573-1964 Cheshire Record Office call no.: P31/1/1-4, P31/2/1-2, P31/3059/1/1-2, P31/3059/2-4, P31/5.

An index for Cheshire parish registers is available online at FamilySearch Historical Records. Here is a list of church records on microfilm at theFamily History Library(FHL) in Salt Lake City.

Bishop's transcripts for Stoak (Stoke), 1607-1848 Records are not in strict chronological order. Some years are missing.

An index for Cheshire, Church of England, Bishop’s transcripts is available online at FamilySearch Historical Records

Non-Conformist Churches
Wolverham, Methodist Chapel. Founded 1954, closed in 1962.

Census records
http://www.1881pubs.com/ for details of public houses in the 1881 census

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.

Poor Law Unions

 * Great Boughton (1837–71) Tarvin (previously Great Boughton) Poor Law Union, Cheshire
 * Chester Poor Law Union(1871–1930)

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