Macclesfield, Christ Church, Cheshire Genealogy

England Cheshire  Macclesfield, Christ Church



Parish History
Great King Street. Founded 1775 as a chapel to Macclesfield, St Michael's, becoming the parish church for part of Macclesfield in 1888; closed in 1983.

In the second half of the 18th century the parish church of Macclesfield, St Michael's was not big enough to cope with the needs of the growing population of the town. In 1772 David Simpson was appointed curate to the church but was deprived of his curacy because of his evangelical beliefs and preaching. Simpson had been invited to Macclesfield by Charles Roe, a local industrialist. Roe built Christ Church for David Simpson, who became its first vicar.

The body of the church was built in seven months in 1775 and the church was opened on Christmas Day of that year. The tower was built the following year. Its height is 107 feet (33 m) which is out of proportion to the body of the church. It was built to this height to compete with the height of the tower of St Michael's Church. David Simpson was a close friend of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. Unusually for an Anglican church, Simpson invited Wesley to preach there on at least 12 occasions.

Following the closure of the church in 1983, the graveyard was reclaimed as an area of open space. This involved the exhumation of at least some of the corpses buried in the graveyard.

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
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.

Cheshire Record Office Reference P 84 Macclesfield Christ Church Parish Date 16th century - 20th century Registers: C 1775-1983, Marriages 1889-1982, Burials 1776-1961. Records other than registers 1599-1983 http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/records.aspx?cat=017-p84&amp;cid=0

Census records
For more information on the history of the workhouse, see Peter Higginbotham's web site: www.workhouses.org.uk and http://www.workhouses.org.uk/index.html?Macclesfield/Macclesfield.shtml

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
Macclesfield Poor Law Union,Cheshire

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