Shotwick, Cheshire Genealogy

Guide to Shotwick, Cheshire ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
SHOTWICK, a township and a parish in Great Boughton district, Cheshire. The township lies 2¾ miles WSW of Ledsham railway station, and 5½ miles NW of Chester. The parish contains also the townships of Capenhurst, Woodbank , Little Saughall , and Great Saughall ; the last of which has a post-office under Chester. There are three dissenting chapels.

St Michael's Church, Shotwick is in the village of Shotwick, Cheshire, England. The church is in the diocese of Chester, the archdeaconry of Chester and the deanery of Wirral South. Its benefice is combined with that of St Nicholas, Burton. The village, including part of the hamlet of Two Mills was within the Wirral Hundred.

St. Michael’s is a medieval double aisled church with largely eighteenth century furniture including box pews and a three decker pulpit. What is certain is that when the Domesday Book was compiled, a church existed at “Soto-wiche”, belonging to the secular canons of St. Werburgh. This church had probably been established about 100 years before. The Norman Church, which supplanted the Saxon one about the beginning of the 12th Century.

Shotwick is a village and civil parish on the Wirral Peninsula in the unitary authority of Cheshire West and Chester and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. The village is situated close to the border with Wales.

Church records
Shotwick 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 Cheshire Archives and Local Studies.

Non-Conformist Churches

 * Baptist

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

 * Great Boughton (1837-1869)
 * Cheshire (1870-1937)
 * West Cheshire (1937-1974)

Poor Law Unions
Tarvin (previously Great Boughton) Poor Law Union, Cheshire

Hawarden Poor Law Union

Chester Poor Law Union from 1871-1930

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)

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
Shotwick on GENUKI