Burscough Bridge, Lancashire Genealogy

England Lancashire  Lancashire Parishes



Chapelry History
Burscough St John was created a chapelry in 1844, taken from and lying within the boundaries of Ormskirk Ancient Parish.

Burscough developed originally as a two small farming villages (Burscough and Burscough Bridge) on a low ridge above the West Lancashire Coastal Plain, and has Viking roots — Burh-skogr = fortress in the woods.

Burscough (pronounced Burs/co) is a village and civil parish within West Lancashire, in North West England, to the north of both Ormskirk and Skelmersdale.

"BURSCOUGH, an ecclesiastical district, [as of 1833] including portions of Lathom and Scarisbrick, in the parish and union of Ormskirk, hundred of West Derby, S. division of the county of Lancaster, 3 miles (N. E. by N.) from Ormskirk, on the road to Preston; the township of Burscough containing 2228 inhabitants. The area of the township is 2309 acres, whereof 1353 are arable, 936 pasture, and 20 wood; the surface is generally level, and the soil good. The Liverpool canal and the Liverpool, Ormskirk, and Preston railway, pass through. The living is a perpetual curacy, in the patronage of the Vicar of Ormskirk; income, £100. The church (St. John's) was built in 1833, at a cost of £3500, and is in the early English style, with good schools attached. At Burscough Hall is a place of worship for Roman Catholics; it is dedicated to St. John, and is in the Grecian style, with a neat altar, above which are four paintings, one by Murillo, and the others by Italian artists: the farm adjacent forms an endowment for the priest, the Rev. John Anderton. There is also a small meeting-house. A priory of Black canons was founded here in the time of Richard I., by Robert Fitz Henry, lord of Lathom, and dedicated to St. Nicholas: at the Dissolution there were a prior, five brethren, and forty servants, and the revenue was estimated at £129. 1. 10. Previously to that period, it was the burial-place of the noble family of Stanley; and subsequently the cemetery, in which stands the mutilated central arch of the church, the only relic of the conventual buildings, became a place of interment for Roman Catholic families. The eight bells of the priory were removed to Ormskirk. A school is endowed with £18. 15. per annum."

From: 'Burrough - Burton-Agnes', A Topographical Dictionary of England (1848), pp. 445-448. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=50846 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.

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
Include here information for parish registers, Bishop’s Transcripts and other types of church records, such as parish chest records. Add the contact information for the office holding the original records. Add links to the Family History Library Catalog showing the film numbers in their collection

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 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

Web sites
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