Pilling, Lancashire Genealogy

England Lancashire  Lancashire Parishes



Chapelry History
Pilling St John the Baptist was created a chapel of ease by 1630 from and lying within the boundaries of Garstang, Lancashire Ancient Parish.

Pilling is an ancient settlement, founded on what was essentially an "island" with the sea on one side and marsh on the others.

Pilling is a village and civil parish within the Wyre borough of Lancashire, England. It is 6.5 miles (10.5 km) north-northeast of Poulton-le-Fylde, 9.4 miles (15.1 km) south-southwest of Lancaster and 14.5 miles (23.3 km) northwest of Preston, in a part of the Fylde known as Over Wyre.

The civil parish of Pilling, which includes the localities of Stake Pool, Scronkey and Eagland Hill.

The Older St John the Baptist was built in 1717. The only structural alteration since then has been the raising of the walls in 1813 to accommodate galleries. It became redundant when the new church was built in 1887.

St John the Baptist was built by the Lancaster firm of Paley &amp; Austin in 1885-87 at a cost of £7,000. It is a large church with a spire recessed in the west tower and replacement for the earlier church in the same churchyard. The old chapel founded in the fifteenth Century is now in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust. Here is an 1848 historical perspective on Pilling Chapelry by topographer, Samuel A. Lewis; note that according to Lewis and again in John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales, Pilling was a chapelry attached to Garstang Parish; see also notes in FHLC:

"PILLING,a chapelry,in the parish and union of Garstang, hundred of Amounderness, N. division of Lancashire, 7½ miles west by north of Garstang. The chapel was erected in 1719-21.

There is a place of worship for Wesleyan Methodists."

A Topographical Dictionary of England by Samuel Lewis (1848), pp. 567-571. Adapted. Date accessed: 20 July 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.

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/

Transcripts for this parish are available.

Online Records
 Church of England 

Pilling chapelry's registers of christenings, marriages and burials, along with those of the ancient parish of Garstang 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 Pilling and comprising the whole ancient parish of Garstang to which it was attached, be certain to see "Church Records" on the GARSTANG ST HELEN PARISH page.

Poor Law Unions
Garstang Poor Law Union, Lancashire

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
Churches Conservation Trust for old chapel http://www.visitchurches.org.uk/findachurch/st-john-the-baptist-pilling/?region=Lancashire