Macclesfield, St Paul, Cheshire Genealogy

England Cheshire  Cheshire Parishes  Macclesfield, St Paul



Parish History
MACCLESFIELD, a market-town, parochial chapelry, and newly-enfranchised borough, having separate jurisdiction, locally in the parish of Prestbury, and hundred of Macclesfield, and the head of a union, in the N. division of the county of Chester. The town is pleasantly situated near the southern extremity of the forest.

The parochial chapelry consists of the nine townships of Hurdsfield, Kettleshulme, Macclesfield, Macclesfield Forest, Pott-Shrigley, Rainow, Sutton, Wildboar-Clough, and Wincle. The parochial chapel, dedicated to St. Michael, and is dependent on the mother church at Prestbury.

Christchurch, was erected in 1775, at the expense of Charles Roe.

In the year 1844, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners endowed two church districts St. Paul's and St. Peter's, Macclesfield, and the districts then became ecclesiastical parishes. There are places of worship for the Society of Friends, Independents, Primitive Methodists, Socinians, and Roman Catholics.

St. Paul's was built 1843-4 as part of a government scheme to build churches in the new urban areas. They are known as Commissioners' Churches or Waterloo Churches. There was a grant of £1,000 to the total cost of £5,400. The earliest Commissioners' churches were fully funded but this led to some extravagance and excess. The rules were changed so that the local community had to raise part of the money and the grant would not cover a tower. St. Paul's is built of stone from Kerridge.

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
Macclesfield, St Paul parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials have been indexed by the following groups:

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.

Parish registers, 1844-1920 An index for Cheshire parish registers is available online in FamilySearch Historical Records (formerly Record Search)

Macclesfield, St. Paul's created from Macclesfield St Michael Cheshire Record Office reference: P225/1-3.

Here is a list of church records on microfilm at the Family History Library (FHL) in Salt Lake City.

Bishop's transcripts for St. Paul's Church, Macclesfield, 1874-1897

An index for Cheshire, Church of England, Bishop’s transcripts is available online in FamilySearch Historical Records (formerly Record Search)

Cheshire Record Office reference: EDB 138

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