Stockport St Mary, Cheshire Genealogy

England Cheshire  Cheshire Parishes  Stockport St Mary

Guide to Stockport St Mary, Cheshire family history and genealogy: parish registers (baptism, christening, marriage, and burial records), civil registration (birth, marriage, and death records), census records, history, wills, cemetery, online transcriptions and indexes, an interactive map and websites.



Parish History
STOCKPORT, is a town, a township, a parish, two sub-districts, and a district, in Cheshire. The town stands on the river Mersey at the influx of the Tame, on the North-western railway at a convergence of five branch-lines, 5¾ miles SSE of Manchester; it was anciently called Stockfort, Storefort, and Stokeport. St. Mary's church was mainly re-built in 1817. Stockport St Mary is the oldest parish church in the town of Stockport and an Ancient parish.

If comprises the chapelries of Distley, Dukinfield , Hyde , Marple , Norbury , and Romiley , and the townships of Bramhall , Bredbury, Brinnington , Etchells , Offerton , Stockport , Torkington , and Werneth .The parish is ecclesiastically cut into the sections of S.-St. Mary, S.-St. Thomas, S.-St. Peter, Bredbury, Disley, Dukinfield, Dukinfield-St. Mark, Dukinfield-St. Matthew, Castle-Hall, High-Lane, Hyde, Hyde-St. Thomas, Marple, Norbury, Portwood, Romiley, Werneth, and Moor.

A church was on the site by 1190 but of this church only the original oratory (which is now an annex to the vestry) remains. Around 1310 a new church was built and only its chancel remains. The rest of the present church was built between 1813 and 1817 to the design of Lewis Wyatt. There was a further restoration in 1848 to replace weathered masonry. The tower originated in the 14th century and was rebuilt in 1612–16 and again in 1810.

Church Records
Stockport St. Mary registers of christenings, marriages and burials have been indexed by the following groups:

Parish registers of St. Mary's Church, Stockport, 1584-1901 Cheshire Record Office reference: P14/1/2-11, P14/2/1-8, P14/3435/2/1-4, P14/4616/1, P14/3435/1, P14/3/1-17, P14/3435/3/1-24, P14/4616/2-3, P14/4/1-5, P14/3790/1-2, P14/4649/1-6, P14/5/1-8, P14/3435/4/1-2.

Civil Registration
Birth, marriages and deaths were kept by the government, from 1 July 1837 to the present day. The civil registration article tells more about these records. Here are two excellent Internet sites with birth, marriage and death indexes available:


 * FreeBMD
 * Cheshire BMD

Registration Districts

 * Stockport

Poor Law Unions

 * For more information on the history of the workhouse, see Peter Higginbotham's web site: www.workhouses.org.uk and Stockport

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

see also England Cheshire Probate Records (FamilySearch Historical Records)