Sockburn, Yorkshire Genealogy

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

For more information and records see Sockburn, Durham

Parish History
Sockburn All Saints was an Ancient Parish partly in Yorkshire and partly in Durham. It was in the diocese of Durham. The River Tees divided the parish and the old church was on the Durham side of the river. The majority of the parish lived across the river in Yorkshire and without a bridge, had to ferry across the river or ford the river at times of the year. The age of the church and situation led to a new church being built at Girsby in North Yorkshire.

The original ruined church of All Saints which is said to have been Saxon in origin lie in the grounds of Sockburn Hall. The Hall was rebuilt in the 1830's and is a listed building. The saxon religious significance of Sockburn can be documented by the consecration of Higbald of Lindisfarne too in AD 780, followed by Eanbald as Archbishop of York in AD 790. 'Socceburg' was also given to the community of St Cuthbert's in AD 990 and may have been a minster of one of the large estates from the 7th to 10th centuries.

SOCKBURN (All Saints), a parish, in the union of Darlington, partly in the S. W. division of Stockton ward, county of Durham, but chiefly in the wapentake of Allertonshire, N. riding of York, 7 miles (S. E.) from Darlington.

See also Sockburn, Durham. The modern parish is in the village of Girsby Yorkshire.

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
Sockburn 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 North Yorkshire County Record Office.

Poor Law Unions
Darlington Poor Law Union, Durham

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