Wray, Lancashire Genealogy

England Lancashire  Lancashire Parishes

Chapelry History
WRAY, with Botton, a township, and an ecclesiastical district, in the parish of Melling, hundred of Lonsdale south of the Sands, N. division of Lancashire, 10 miles (N. E. by E.) from Lancaster, on the road to Settle; containing 718 inhabitants. In the reign of Edward I., Geoffrey de Neville had a grant of free warren here. The Pooleys of Wray, and the Tunstalls of Botton, ancient and reputable families connected with the township, no longer exist. The township comprises 3760a. 3r. 33p. of inclosed land, and about 2000 acres uninclosed; the surface is undulated, the soil clay in the higher parts, and alluvial in the lower, and the scenery picturesque: most of the land is good pasture and meadow. A bed of coal, eighteen inches thick, runs through the higher portion of the township; and there are two excellent flagstone-quarries. Wray is the most populous village in the parish, and Botton one of the highest and most remote situations in the county. The Roe-burn partly propels a silk-mill, and uniting with the Hind-burn, forms the Wray beck, a tributary of the Wenning, which last river enters the Lune below Hornby. The North-Western railway into Yorkshire is distant only about half a mile. The church, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, was built in 1839, on a site given by the Rev. W. E. Hoskins, of Margate; it is in the early English style, and cost £700. The living is a perpetual curacy, in the patronage of Five Trustees; net income, £90, with a house built in 1846. The Society of Friends and the Wesleyans have places of worship. Richard Pooley, in 1685, bequeathed £20 for the erection of a school, and £200 to purchase land for its support; the income is about £35, which sum, with about £4 per annum arising from a bequest by Mary Thompson in 1803, is applied in aid of a parochial school.

From: A Topographical Dictionary of England by Samuel Lewis (1848), pp. 692-695. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=51432 Date accessed: 03 August 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.

Church records
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Census records
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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.

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 * England Jurisdictions 1851
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Web sites
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