Feniscowles, Lancashire Genealogy

England Lancashire  Lancashire Parishes

Chapelry History
Feniscowles or "PLEASINGTON, a township, in the parish, union, and Lower division of the hundred, of Blackburn, N. division of Lancashire, 2 miles (W. by S.) from Blackburn; containing 517 inhabitants. This was the seat of a family of the local name, whose heiress brought the estate to the Winkelys. It afterwards passed to the Ainsworths or Aynesworths; and Thomas Aynesworth, Esq., the last of this family, who died about forty years ago, sold Feniscowles, in Pleasington, to the Feilden family. The township is bounded on the south-east by the river Derwent or Darwen, and lies between two turnpike-roads, both leading from Preston to Blackburn. It comprises about 1600 acres, almost equally divided into arable, pasture, and woodland: coal is pretty general in the township, and there is an extensive quarry of very superior hard white freestone. Part of the population is employed in hand-loom weaving. Here is a station of the Blackburn and Preston railway. The house of Feniscowles, built by Sir William Feilden, Bart., is beautifully situated in a romantic valley on the banks of the Derwent. A church was built at Feniscowles in 1840, on a site given by Sir William Feilden, who also supplied the stone for its erection; it is dedicated to Emmanuel, is a neat stone structure with a spire, and cost £2000. The living is a perpetual curacy, in the gift of the Vicar of Blackburn; net income, £179, with a house. The district assigned to the church includes the whole of Pleasington, and parts of Livesey and Hoghton. A Roman Catholic chapel, a very beautiful structure, was built and endowed about thirty years since, by the late John Butler, Esq., of Pleasington Hall, at a cost of nearly £20,000.

From: A Topographical Dictionary of England by Samuel Lewis (1848), pp. 576-578. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=51216 Date accessed: 30 June 2010.

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
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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
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 * England Jurisdictions 1851
 * Vision of Britain

Web sites
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