Bacup, Lancashire Genealogy

England Lancashire  Lancashire Parishes



Chapelry History
Bacup (or Bacop) St John th Evangelist is a chapelry created by 1788 from, and lying within the boundaries of Whalley Parish.

'Th'owd Parish Church' (The Old Parish Church), the original building was the first Anglican Church in Bacup and dated from 1788. The present building dates from 1881 after the partial collapse of the earlier chapelry building in 1871. The sloping floor of the present church hints at some of the earlier problems on the site.

Bacup was a chapelry linked with the parishes of Whalley and Rochdale, and divided between the townships of Newchurch[-in-Rossendale] and Spotland in the hundred of Blackburn.

Here is part of a 19th Century historical perspective by the famed topographer, Samuel A. Lewis:

"BACUP, [or Bacop] St John the Evangelist, a consolidated chapelry [by 1788], in the townships of Newchurch [which is distinctly different from Newchurch (Culcheth, near Leigh Parish)] and Spotland, parishes of Whalley and Rochdale, union of Haslingden, Higher division of the hundred of Blackburn, N. division of Lancashire, 7 miles north and west from Rochdale.

There were two places of worship for Particular Baptists, and two for Wesleyan Methodists."

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
Bacup 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 Bacup and comprising the whole ancient parish of Whalley to which it was attached, be certain to see "Church Records" on the WHALLEY PARISH page.

Poor Law Unions
Haslingden, Lancashire Poor Law Union

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