Heapey, Lancashire Genealogy

England Lancashire  Lancashire Parishes



Chapelry History
Heapey St Barnabas was created a chapel of ease by 1711, lying within the boundaries of Leyland Ancient Parish.

Heapey is a small village and civil parish of the Borough of Chorley, in Lancashire, England. It has been within the blast zone of an ordinance factory used throughout the Second World War after compulsory purchase of land in 1937.

Heapey in Lancashire, named in Old English as ‘(rose)hip hedge or enclosure’, heope ‘hip’ + hege ‘hedge’ or gehæg ‘enclosure’.

Heapey St. Barnabas is in the Diocese of Blackburn and was built at some point prior to 1552 and was enlarged in 1740 and 1829. It is a grade II listed historical structure and can seat 470 worshipers.

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.

The following is taken from Kelly's Directory of Lancashire for 1924:

"Heapey is a township and with part of Wheelton constitutes an ecclesiastical parish, formed out of the ancient parish of Leyland, near the high road from Chorley to Blackburn, 8½ miles south-west from Blackburn, and 9 miles (14 km) south-east from Preston, it is in the Chorley division of the county, hundred of Leyland, petty sessional division of Leyland hundred, union and county court district of Chorley, rural deanery of Leyland, archdeaconry of Blackburn and diocese of Manchester. The Leeds and Liverpool Canal passes on the west. The church of St. Barnabas, standing on an eminence and erected previously in 1552, was enlarged in 1740, 1829 and 1867; it now consists of chancel, nave and transepts; the church was restored in 1876 and 1898: there are 600 sittings. The register dates from the year 1833, all entries prior to that date being registered at Leyland. The living is a vicarage, net yearly value £330, including glebe and residence, in the gift of the vicar of Leyland, and held since 1910 by the Reverend David Smith Bennard, B.A., of London University. Lady Sinclair, the trustees of Mrs. Paulet and Mrs. Sumner Mayhew are the principal landowners. The soil is of a mixed nature, partly light and clayey; subsoil, stone. The land is chiefly in pasture. The area is 1,466 acres (6 km2), of which 31 acres (130,000 m2) are water; rateable value £6,330; the population of the township in 1921 was 515, and of the ecclesiastical parish in 1911 2,405. Sexton Edward Hunt"

"HEAPEY,a township and chapelry, in the parish and hundred of Leyland, union of Chorley, N. division of the county of Lancaster, 2¼ miles (N. N. E.) from Chorley. Heapey also contains also the township of Wheelton. Heapey Chapel was built by the year ."

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

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

Web sites
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=53014 British History online Heapey