Cockersand Abbey, Lancashire Genealogy

England Lancashire  Lancashire Parishes



Parish History
Cockersand Abbey is a former abbey near Cockerham in the City of Lancaster district of Lancashire, England. It was founded before 1184 as the Hospital of St Mary on the marsh belonging to Leicester Abbey. It was refounded as a Premonstratensian priory and subsequently elevated to an abbey in 1192. It also continued as a hospital.

The abbey was dissolved in 1539 and acquired by a John Kitchen. The site is now adjacent to a farm house and the only significant relic is the still intact, vaulted chapter house which was built in 1230 and used as a family mausoleum by the Daltons of Thurnham Hall during the 18th and 19th centuries. There are some fragmentaryy remains of the church adjacent.

The chapter house is a Grade I listed building and Scheduled Ancient Monument. In 2007 English Heritage made an £80,000 grant to the owner to help preserve the building. There is no public access to the chapter house.

Two Roman silver statuettes were discovered on Cockersand Moss near the abbey site in 1718, possibly indicating the presence of a Romano-British shrine nearby.

Since Cokersand Abbey is an extra parochial place it is necessary to search Cockerham, Lancashire Overton, Lancashire records for events.

"COCKERSAND-ABBEY, an extra-parochial liberty, in the union of Lancaster, hundred of Lonsdale south of the Sands, N. division of the county of Lancaster, 7 miles southwest by south from Lancaster. See an excellent 19th Century perspective on this place in the footnote below.

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/

Church records
Include here information for parish registers, Bishop’s Transcripts 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
http://www.1881pubs.com/ for details of public houses in the 1881 census

Poor Law Unions
Lancaster 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
Add any relevant sites that aren’t mentioned above.