Worcester St Oswald's Hospital, Worcestershire Genealogy

Guide to Worcester St Oswald's Hospital, Worcestershire ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
Worcester St Oswald's was a chapel attached to St Oswalds Hospital. Although the foundation of the hospital is usually ascribed to St. Oswald himself, there is no charter or evidence existing to prove the truth of the statement. The first mention of the house comes when it had already become a hospital, when in 1268 William de Beauchamp left 10s. for the infirm of the hospital of St. Oswald. In 1296 William de Molendiniis, who was also a benefactor of St. Wulstan's hospital, died before he could finish the church he was building to St. Oswald, evidently in connexion with the hospital. In 1539 Nicholas Udal, then master of the hospital, leased the same with the chapel, chapel yard, etc., to John Hereford. Thus the house was saved from the ordinary dissolution, although its revenue was alienated. The advowson of the chapel was granted in 1542 to the dean and chapter of Worcester. From this time the hospital,having lost its ecclesiastical aspect, has survived as a charitable institution, which exists at the present day practically on the lines of its reorganization in 1664 and 1753. The hospital was rebuilt in 1873.

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
Worcester St Oswald's Hospital parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

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

Records are also available at the The Hive (where the Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service is located).

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Worcestershire 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

Websites
Worcester Branch of the Birmingham and Midland Society for Genealogy and Heraldry Add any relevant sites that aren’t mentioned above.