Wirksworth, Derbyshire Genealogy

Guide to Wirksworth, Derbyshire ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
WIRKSWORTH, a town, a township, a parish, a sub-district, and a hundred, in Derbyshire. The parish contains four townships in Belper district, five in Ashborne district, and two in Bakewell district.

WIRKSWORTH (St. Mary), a market-town and parish, in the union of Belper, chiefly in the hundred of Wirksworth, but partly in that of Appletree, and partly in that of High Peak, county of Derby. This place, formerly written Wircesworth, Werchestworde, Wyrkysworth. There is also a manor within the parish, which has no courts, called the Holland, or Richmond, manor, granted in 1553, by the crown, to Ralph Gell. The parish includes the chapelries of Alderwasley and Cromford; the townships of Ashley-Hay, Biggin, Hopton, Ible, and Idridgehay with Allton; and the hamlets of Callow, Ivonbrook-Grange, and Middleton. There are places of worship for Baptists, Independents, Wesleyans, and Primitive Methodists.

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. John Palmer's Wirksworth website with index to St Mary's registers is engineered for searches by individual and by family. It is free and covers Wirksworth and neighboring areas up to forty miles away. 

Church records
Wirksworth parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

To find the names of the neighboring parishes, use England Jurisdictions 1851 Map. In this site, search for the name of the parish, click on the location "pin", click Options and click List contiguous parishes.

Records are also available at the Derbyshire Record Office.

Non-Conformist Churches

 * Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint
 * General Baptist
 * Independent/Congregational
 * Primitive Methodist
 * Wesleyan Methodist

Poor Law Unions
Belper Poor Law Union, Derbyshire

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Derbyshire Probate Records to find the name of the court having primary jurisdiction. Scroll down in the article to the section Court Jurisdictions by Parish.

Courtesy of David Kiernan: Wills, Probates and Inventories 1524-1602for this area and held at the Lichfield Record Office.

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

Taxes
The Hearth Tax 1662-70: Courtesy of John Palmer of Dorset

Websites
Wirksworth on GENUKI