Hornby, Lancashire Genealogy

Guide to Hornby, Lancashire ancestry, family history, and genealogy: chapelry register transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Chapelry History
HORNBY (St Margaret), a township and chapelry, and formerly a market-town, in the parish of Melling, hundred of Lonsdale south of the Sands, N. division of Lancashire, 9 miles (N. E.) from Lancaster. The chapel of Hornby was built by 1742. Other places in the parish include: Farleton. There is a Roman Catholic chapel.

A church was on the site in 1338. The oldest part of the current church is the octagonal tower which was built by Sir Edward Stanley, Lord Mounteagle, in 1514. Lord Mounteagle also arranged for the rebuilding of the chancel but this was incomplete when he died in 1524. In 1817 the old nave was demolished and replaced by a new nave. In 1889 a restoration was carried out by Paley, Austin and Paley. This consisted of the erection of north and south arcades and a clerestory, the removal of the west gallery, and the replacement of box pews by modern seating.

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

 * 1538 - 1910 at FamilySearch — index
 * 1603 - 1910 at FamilySearch — index and images

 Church of England 

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

Poor Law Unions
Caton Gilbert 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