Oldham St Mary, Lancashire Genealogy

England Lancashire  Lancashire Parishes



Chapel History
Oldham St Mary is an ancient parochial chapel and a market town in the county of Lancashire, created as early as 1427 [chapel registers commence from 1558] from, and lying within the boundaries of Prestwich St Mary, Lancashire Ancient Parish.

Other towns and places in the parish include: Oldham below Town, Westwood, Mumps, Greenacres, Oldham above Town, Clarkesfield, Chadderton, and Moor.

Here is a brief 1848 historical perspective by the topographer, Samuel A. Lewis, for this place [adapted]:

"OLDHAM, an enfranchised borough, a parochial chapelry with several attached chapelries, and the head of a union, in the parish of Prestwich, hundred of Salford, S. division of the county of Lancaster, 7 miles northeast by east of Manchester. The ancient chapel was dedicated to St. Mary. While Oldham St Mary was a mere chapelry, however it was a parochial chapelry and as such it held some ecclesiastical jurisdiction over several additional chapelries. These churches included:


 * - 1765
 * - 1829
 * - 1769
 * - 1758
 * - 1723
 * - 1844
 * - 1857
 * - 1844
 * - 1847
 * - 1844
 * - 1845
 * - 1847

There were additional, more modern built chapels within Oldham as well. See John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales, to determine their names.

There were places of worship for Baptists, the Society of Friends, Independents, Kilhamites, Moravians, Primitive and Wesleyan Methodists, Unitarians, and Roman Catholics.

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

Online Records
 Church of England 

Oldham St Mary chapelry's registers of christenings, marriages and burials, along with those of the ancient parish of Prestwich 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 Oldham St Mary and comprising the whole ancient parish of Prestwich to which it was attached, be certain to see "Church Records" on the PRESTWICH ST MARY PARISH page.

Parish registers for St Mary's Church (Oldham, Lancashire), 1558-1968 Microreproduction of original records housed at the Central Library, Oldham. St. Mary's is the parish church of Oldham. Includes some records for the chapelries of Shaw and Royton. Manchester Archives Central Library call nos.: L 73/2/10-22, L 73/3/1, L 73/4/1-2; L 185/DRO2-6, 14.

Poor Law Unions
Oldham 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
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=53007 British History Online Oldham