Quernmore, Lancashire Genealogy

England Lancashire  Lancashire Parishes



Chapelry History
Quernmore was created a district chapel in 1836 from, and lying within the boundaries of Lancaster St Mary, Lancashire Ancient Parish.

The village consists of a small number of residential properties, mostly farm houses, nestling in the bottom of the small valley of the River Conder. The Methodist chapel lies at the heart of the community but is smaller than St Peter's, the Church of England church which lies isolated next to Quernmore Primary School.

There used to be one public house whose address is still the Temperance Hotel. The name used to be the Dog and Partridge (this name can still be seen on the electrical substation, 100m to the south). It became the Temperance Hotel after the construction of the Thirlmere Aqueduct, completed 1894, as a consequence of the rowdiness of the navvies working on the aqueduct. The public house closed in 1900. The premises became the post office and village store until closure in 2008.

The largest residential property is Quernmore Park, built in 1793 by the architect Thomas Harrison.

The valley has an ancient history. In 1970 a Roman pottery kiln was unearthed near the Friends Meeting House, and other kilns have been discovered in the local vicinity.[4] In former times, the slopes of Clougha Pike which forms the eastern wall of the valley, were mined for millstone grit to form quern stones. There was some small scale coal mining and charcoal production. The valley also has two surviving watermills, one on the slopes towards Littledale and one at Conder Bottom whose mill pond now is used as a fishery. Quernmore was at one stage a Royal Forest.

Quernmore lies within the Forest of Bowland Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, although historically it maintained its own separate identity and even in medieval times, never came under the sway of the powerful Lordship of Bowland.

The Diocese of Blackburn is a Church of England diocese, covering much of Lancashire, created in 1926 from part of the Diocese of Manchester. The Diocese includes the towns of Blackburn, Blackpool, Burnley, and the cities of Lancaster, and Preston, as well as a large part of the Ribble Valley.

"QUERNMOOR, a township, in the parish of Lancaster, hundred of Lonsdale south of the Sands, N. division of Lancashire, 3¼ miles (S. E.) from Lancaster; containing 556 inhabitants. The ancient limits of the forest of Quernmoor comprised the whole of the township, and perhaps even extended into the township of Bulk. Parts of the forest were inclosed by Edmund, brother of Edward I.; and it now comprises 3000 acres of inclosed land, in addition to extensive wastes. The perambulation of the forest within the borough jurisdiction, by the corporation of Lancaster, was latterly repeated every seven years, and continued until 1809. In 1811 an act for the inclosure of the remainder of the forest was obtained, and from that time the perambulation has been confined to the limits of the borough proper. Gray's prospect of Lunedale, as described in his works, was taken at Queen's road; where is an ancient well, which tradition represents to have been visited by a queen of England. From a higher station is a view of an isthmus fringed by tall trees, the site of an ancient hermitage. The park of the Hon. Mr. Clifford, mentioned by the poet, and the old Hall, were purchased by Charles Gibson, Esq., from Lord Clifford; and the present mansion of Quernmoor Park was built by Mr. Gibson, about sixty years ago, of variegated freestone from the adjacent moor. The stone here is full of those hard flinty particles that constitute what is called "hunger-stone;" small millstones or querns were formerly made of it, and it is probable that Quernmoor derived its name from the aptitude of the stone for this purpose, an opinion strengthened by the discovery of several ancient millstones in the neighbourhood. A church was erected in 1833, and dedicated to St. Peter; it contains 300 sittings, half of which are free. The living is a perpetual curacy, in the gift of the Vicar of Lancaster, with a net income of £100. There is a small national school. Many natural curiosities are met with here, including specimens of petrified moss, and remarkably fine septaria. Remains of a Roman pottery were found in the park some years ago, when a variety of bricks, tiles, and ancient vessels were taken from the ovens: a tile with elevated edges, and many of the bricks, bore the inscription ala sebusia, which designates a wing of Roman cavalry not before known. These antiquities are supposed to be of the time of the Emperor Severus."

From: A Topographical Dictionary of England by Samuel Lewis (1848), pp. 623-627. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=51227 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/

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
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
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 * England Jurisdictions 1851
 * Vision of Britain

Web sites
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