Great Marsden, Lancashire Genealogy

Guide to Great Marsden, Lancashire ancestry, family history, and genealogy: chapelry register transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Chapelry History
Great Marsden was created a district chapel in 1845 from, and lying within the boundaries of Whalley civil Parish, and the township chapelry of Colne, Lancashire. A district church was endowed in 1845 and was dedicated to St. John. The Wesleyans have a place of worship.

The parish history can be summarized:


 * 1845 Mission church founded
 * 1848 Church built in Barkerhouse Road
 * 1896 Church restored
 * 1996 Demolished, services held in the former school - Church Centre next to the site
 * 1999 Church Centre unsafe, services held at St.Philip's whilst new church to be built on the site of the previous one
 * 2000 May, New church building consecrated, the Parish now combined with that of St.Philip on Leeds Road

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/

Online Records

 * 1538 - 1910 at FamilySearch — index
 * 1603 - 1910 at FamilySearch — index and images

 Church of England 

Great Marsden chapelry's registers of christenings, marriages and burials, along with those of the ancient parish of Whalley to which it is attached, have been mostly transcribed and are displayed online at the following web sites and ranges of years:

For a full list of all those chapels surrounding Great Marsden and comprising the whole ancient parish of Whalley to which it was attached, be certain to see "Church Records" on the WHALLEY ST MARY PARISH page.

Non Conformist Records

 * 1647-1996 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index (dates may vary by parish)

Poor Law Unions
Burnley 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