Brightside, Yorkshire Genealogy

England Yorkshire Yorkshire Parishes  West Riding  Brightside

Chapel History
BRIGHTSIDE, a village, a chapelry, a township, and a subdistrict in Sheffield parish, W. R. Yorkshire. The village stands adjacent to the Sheffield and Rotherham railway 2¼ miles NE of Sheffield; and has a station on the railway, and a post office under Rotherham. The chapelry was constituted in 1854. Pop., 10,101. Houses, 2,104. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of York. Value, £300.* Patron, altern. the Crown and the Archbishop. One church was built in 1854; and another, at a cost of nearly £12,000, in 1869. The township bears the name of Brightside-Bierlow; and includes Bridgehouses, Nursery, and Wicker, which are suburbs of Sheffield,-as also the villages of Crabtree, Grimesthorpe, and Neepsend. Acres, 2,690. Real property, £85,768; of which £1,666 are in mines and quarries. Pop. 29,818. Houses, 6,243. There are cutlery-works, rolling-mills, a chapel of ease, two Methodist chapels, a library, national schools, and charities £41.-The subdistrict is conterminate with the township.

From: John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))

BRIGHTSIDE-BIERLOW, a township, in the parish and union of Sheffield, N. division of the wapentake of Strafforth and Tickhill, W. riding of York, 3 miles (N. E.) from Sheffield; containing 10,089 inhabitants. This populous and very extensive township, parts of which form suburbs to the borough of Sheffield, partakes in the manufactures of the surrounding district. Several large steel-works, foundries, and ironforges have been established; and the manufacture of table-knives and cutlery of various kinds, and of scythes and agricultural implements, is carried on to a great extent: there are also quarries of excellent buildingstone. The village of Brightside is situated on the river Don, and in the immediate vicinity are several pleasing villas, and some richly varied scenery; Wincobank hill is about 300 feet above the river, and commands a prospect unusually fine and extensive. Here is a station on the Sheffield and Rotherham railway; and a new road to Barnsley has been constructed, leading through the romantic dell of Burngreave to Pitsmoor, and avoiding the precipitous hill of Pye Bank. Three ecclesiastical districts, called Brightside, Pitsmoor, and Wicker, respectively, were constituted in August, 1845, under the act 6th and 7th of Victoria, cap. 37: each living is in the gift of the Crown and the Archbishop of York alternately. The district of Brightside extends from the east-northeast suburbs of Sheffield, in the direction of Rotherham, its middle and greatest breadth being about a mile; Wicker is an immediate suburb of Sheffield, and more to the north lies Pitsmoor. There are several places of worship for dissenters. At Wincobank are remains of Roman fortifications and embankments.

From: Lewis, Samuel A., A Topographical Dictionary of England (1848), pp. 375-379. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=50830 Date accessed: 14 September 2011.

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
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.

Census records
Contributor: Include an overview if there is any unique information, such as the census for X year was destroyed. Add a link to online sites for indexes and/or images. Also add a link to the Family History Library Catalog showing the film numbers in their collection.

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.