Chelsea St Luke, Middlesex Genealogy

Guide to Chelsea St Luke, Middlesex ancestry, family history, and genealogy: Parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
CHELSEA is a small village on the Thames. It is one of the smaller inner London parishes, lying in the Kensington Division of Ossulstone Hundred.

CHELSEA, (1559) comprised the parishes of St. Luke and the more modern one of Holy Trinity, Sloane Street, Upper Chelsea (1830), both of which in 1851 were in the Kensington division of the hundred of Ossulstone, county of Middlesex. In addition to these two churches, Chelsea was comprised of a considerable number of additional chapels subdividing the parish boundary.

Within this civil parish boundary lay the large Chelsea Royal Hospital for veteran (army) soldiers, "a handsome structure" erected by Sir Christopher Wren, with an operating chapel. The hospital held about 500 in-pensioners (in-house pensioners). In addition, another hospital, for soldiers awaiting admittance into Chelsea Royal Hospital, called York Hospital also lay within the parish. The parish included the Royal Military Asylum, built and founded in 1801. It was specifically built for the support of those children whose fathers were serving in foreign stations and for the education of orphaned children of soldiers, with a chapel.

In the parish, there were places of worship for Baptists, Independents, Wesleyans and Roman Catholics.' '''

View a List of District Churches and Chapels Within the Parish of St Luke Chelsea.

The "Victoria County History" of Chelsea (2004) is available online. Includes chapters on landownership, economic history, social history, local government, religious history (Church of England, Roman Catholicism, Protestant nonconformity, foreign churches and non-Christian faiths).

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.

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.

1600 Lay Subsidy

 * 1600 - Lay Subsidy Returns for London, Middlesex, Surrey (north) 1593-1600: Chelsey (TNA E179/142/234) at Alan H. Nelson website - free

1666 Hearth Tax

 * Hearth Tax: Middlesex 1666: Chelsea at British History Online - free.

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Middlesex Probate Records to find the name of the court having primary jurisdiction. Scroll down in the article to the section Court Jurisdictions by Parish.

Cemetery
A 1921 survey of (1) monuments in the chancel, (2) monuments in the Lawrence chapel, (3) monuments in the More chapel, (4) monuments in the nave, (5) monuments in the tower, (5) floor slabs in the church, and (6) monuments in the churchyard is available online.

Poor Law records

 * The St Luke Chelsea, Workhouse Admission and Discharge Registers, 1743-1769 and 1782-1799, courtesy: London Lives

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
Chelsea St Luke on GENUKI