Comprehensive List of Chapelries in Ormskirk Parish

Return to the Lancashire Probate Jurisdictions, Parishes O through R page.

ORMSKIRK (St. Peter and St. Paul), a market town and parish, and the head of a union, in the hundred of West Derby, S. division of Lancashire; containing, with the chapelry of Skelmersdale, and the townships of Bickerstaffe, Burscough, Lathom, and Scarisbrick, 14,608 inhabitants, of whom 4891 are in the town, 13 miles (N. N. E.) from Liverpool, on the road to Preston, 40 (S. by W.) from Lancaster, and 209 (N. W. by N.) from London. Ormskirk is not found in the Domesday survey; but, according to very credible tradition, the parish belonged to Orm, the Saxon proprietor of Halton, who, driven from his possessions in Cheshire, established himself in Lancashire, and, by his marriage with Alice, daughter of Herveus, a Norman nobleman, ancestor of Theobald Walter, obtained large estates in this county. He was the founder, no doubt, of the church; the word kirk, with his own name, constituting the name of the parish. It is certain, that a church, and the name of Ormskirk, both existed in the reign of Richard I., when Robert, son of Henry de Torbock and Lathom, who is supposed to have been a descendant of Orm, founded the priory of Burscough, which was endowed with a great part of the parish, including the manor of Ormskirk. On the dissolution of monasteries, the manor was granted to the Earl of Derby, in whose family it has ever since continued. In the civil war of the 17th century, this place was the scene of a conflict between the royalist and parliamentary forces on the 20th August 1644, in which the former were defeated with considerable loss; and on the 16th October, in the same year, a skirmish took place, which has been denominated Ormskirk fight.

From: A Topographical Dictionary of England by Smauel Lewis  (1848), pp. 479-483. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=51194 Date accessed: 07 June 2010.

Here's a Comprehensive List of Chapelries in Ormskirk Parish:

Skelmersdale - 1817

Lathom - 1604

Scarisbirck - 1853

Burscough -

Bickerstaffe - 1853