Manchester St Ann, Lancashire Genealogy

England Lancashire  Lancashire Parishes



Chapelry History
St. Ann's church, on the south side of St. Ann's square, founded in 1709, under the auspices of Lady Ann Bland, is a spacious structure in the Grecian style, and of a mixed order, with a tower formerly surmounted by a spire, which has been taken down; the interior is appropriately decorated." Manchester St Ann was created as a chapel of ease from, and lying within the boundaries of Manchester Our Lady, St George and St Denys, Lancashire Ancient Parish.

St Ann's was built in Acres Field. Construction began in 1709 and the church was consecrated in 1712. It was a Low Church as opposed to the High Church Collegiate Church. Its congregation tended towards the Whigs. A district was not assigned to St Ann's until September 1838. St Ann's church steeple was badly damaged by an earthquake in 1777 and was removed shortly after.

It is noteworthy that the Dean and Fellows of the Collegiate church required payment for any marriage conducted at St Ann's, Early baptisms and burials i.e. up to 1736 were recorded in the Collegiate Church registers. The same applied to marriages before May 1838.(see web site link below for Henry Mantell's background history of the Collegiate Church)

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

Church records
Online records

There are online transcriptions for both Ancoats All Souls (beginning in 1850) and prior to that, it's parent church from which it was created--St Ann's Manchester, as well as for most of the Manchester City ecclesiastical parishes--including the ancient parish (Cathedral) of Our Lady, St George and St Denys, and for the baptism, marriage and burial registers of many of its numerous chapelries lying within its boundaries. Displayed below are those records from specifically All Souls, St Ann's chapelry and for the Cathedral, located at the web sites indicated below; note also the ranges of years:

Here are the online transcriptions for the ancient parish for Manchester St Mary (Our Lady), St George and Denys (The Cathedral):

If you did not find your ancestor in any of the above three church registers, then see MANCHESTER OUR LADY, ST GEORGE, &amp; ST DENYS (The Cathedral) for a full list of all chapelries and churches you can search online, and which comprise this vast parish boundary.

Original Records

FamilySearch has microfilmed the original Parish registers for St. Ann's Church, Manchester, 1736-1856, copies of original manuscripts formerly held at the Manchester Central Library, Manchester, England. Manchester Archives Central Library call no.: M 403/1/1/1.

Poor Law Unions
Manchester 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

Web sites
Henry Mantell's article http://www.aidan.co.uk/article_manchester_cathedral.htm for background to the Dean and Fellows of Manchester Collegiate Church and the reason for St Ann's marriages being recorded there.

A wiki article describing an online collection is found at:

England, Lancaster, Cheshire, Yorkshire Parish Registers (FamilySearch Historical Records)