Well, Yorkshire Genealogy

England Yorkshire  North Riding  Well



Parish History
Well St Michael is an Ancient Parish in the county of Yorkshire.Other places in the parish include: Langley, Snape, Watlass Moor, Snape with Thorpe, Thorp Perrow, and Snape with Langley.

WELL (St. James), a parish, in the union of Bedale, wapentake of Hang-East, N. riding of York;containing, with Snape township, 1090 inhabitants, of whom 361 are in the township of Well, 4½ miles (S.)from Bedale. This place derives its name from a celebrated well dedicated to St. Michael, which, at all times of the year, is supplied with water by a spring issuing from the middle of the road between Well and Masham.An hospital in honour of St. Michael the Archangel, for a master, two priests, and 24 poor brethren and sisters,was founded here in 1342, by Sir Ralph de Neville,lord of Middleham, and at the Dissolution had a revenue of £42. 12. 3. It now contains 16 rooms, eight for men, and eight for women, whose maintenance amounts to about £190 per annum. The parish comprises 6811acres, of which 250 are woodland, and of the remainder about two-thirds arable, and one-third grass. Limestone is wrought for agricultural purposes; and wool-combing to some extent is carried on. The living is a discharged vicarage, valued in the king's books at £8. 13. 7.; net income, £120; patron and impropriator, Charles Chaplin, Esq. The church contains several monuments to the lords of Snape. Thomas, Earl of Exeter, in 1605established a charity called Neville's workhouse, which was converted into schools in 1788, two being fixed at Well and two at Snape: the funds amount to about £100per annum.

From: A Topographical Dictionary of England (1848), pp. 499-506. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=51386 Date accessed: 08 May 2011.

Civil Registration
Records from the Northallerton registration district held at the North Yorkshire Registration Service are included in the online index available at Yorkshire BMD for post 1837 events; view the coverage table to check progress on the availability of index search.

Marriages include


 * Church of England marriages.
 * Civil Marriages at register offices, or non-conformist churches where a registrar was required to be present at the ceremony.
 * Authorised Person marriages. These cover the non-conformist places of worship which applied to keep their own registers as a result of the Marriage Act, 1898 (bringing them into line with Jewish and Quaker marriages which had this status since 1837). In such cases an 'Authorised Person' (usually the minister or priest) recorded the ceremony instead of the registrar. Earlier weddings in these places would be included with civil marriage registers.

A secondary index of 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 however this secondary index may omit the event and may not contain the detail of the Yorkshire BMD index

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.

Contributor: Include here information for parish registers, Bishop’s Transcripts, nonconformist 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
Bedale Poor Law Union, Yorkshire

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Yorkshire 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
Contributor: Add any relevant sites that aren’t mentioned above.