Whitfield, Derbyshire Genealogy

England Derbyshire



Parish History
Whitfield is an Ecclesiastical Parish in the county of Derbyshire, created in 1845 from Charlesworth chapelry in Glossop, Derbyshire Ancient Parish.

WHITFIELD, a township, in the parish and union of Glossop, hundred of High Peak, N. division of the county of Derby, 1 mile (S.) from Glossop; containing 3044 inhabitants. It comprises 1577 acres, mostly freehold; and contains, besides the pleasant village of Whitfield, the villages of Charlestown, Green-Vale, and Littlemoor. Green-Vale is connected with Howard-Town, or New Glossop, on the road to Woolleybridge: Littlemoor joins Howard-Town near the market-place, on the eastern side; and nearer to Whitfield is Charlestown. The population has increased very much of late years, through the extension of the cotton-trade. The ecclesiastical district of Whitfield was constituted in July 1845, under the act 6th and 7th Victoria, cap. 37; and became a parish, conformably with the provisions of this act, on the consecration of the church, in September 1846. It is six miles in length and two miles and a half in breadth, including part of Whitfield and parts of other townships. The edifice, dedicated to St. James, is in the early English style, and consists of a nave, chancel, aisles, and transepts, with a tower and spire 114 feet high: the cost of the building exceeded £4000. The living is a perpetual curacy, in the patronage of the Crown and the Bishop of Lichfield, alternately; net income, £150. There are places of worship for Independents, Primitive Methodists, and Wesleyans. In Whitfield township is a school, built about 1786 by Joseph Haigh, Esq., who endowed it with land and houses of the present value of £40; he also left the interest of £1000 to be expended in clothes for 24 poor men and women.

From: A Topographical Dictionary of England (1848), pp. 551-555. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=51399 Date accessed: 06 April 2011.

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.

Church records
To find the names of the neighbouring parishes, use England Jurisdictions 1851. In this site, search for the name of the parish, click on the location "pin", click Options and click List contiguous parishes.

Whitfield St james became a parish in 1846 a former chapelry of Glossop, Derbyshire and included the townships of Chunal, Dinting Vale, Hatfield, part of Padfield and part of Glossop. Derbyshire Record Office reference D2247 has deposited registers Bap 1846-1957 Mar 1846-1963 Burial 1846-1900, 1908-1927 Banns 1847-1873, 1939-1986

Contributor: Include here information for parish registers, Bishop’s Transcripts, non conformist 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

Poor Law Unions
Glossop Poor Law Union,Derbyshire

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Derbyshire 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
Contributor: add any relevant sites that aren’t mentioned above.