Stanlow, Cheshire Genealogy

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

Parish History
STAN LOW-HOUSE, is an extra-parochial liberty, in the union of Great Boughton, the Higher division of the hundred of Wirral, South division of the county of Chester, it is 8 miles N by E from Chester. It is situated on the estuary of the Mersey. An abbey of Cistercian monks was founded here in 1178; but on account of the inundations of the Mersey in 1296, it was removed to Whalley, in Lancashire.

Stanlow was an extra parochial place in Cheshire and it is necessary to search surrounding parishes for ecclesiastical records. Great Stanney is the parish to which Stanlow was attached. Stanlow became a civil parish in 1866 and was added to Great Stanney in 1911. In 1964 Ellesmere Port Christ Church became the parish church for the area.

The abbey was founded in 1178 by John FitzRichard, the sixth Baron of Halton. In 1279 it was flooded by water from the Mersey and in 1287 during a fierce storm. The monks appealed to the pope for the monastery to be moved to a better site and this move took place in 1296. However a small cell of monks remained on the site until the Reformation, the site becoming a grange of Whalley Abbey. The remains of the abbey lie between the Mersey and the Manchester Ship Canal.

Find Neighboring Parishes
Use England Jurisdictions 1851 Map
 * Type the name of the parish in the search bar
 * Click on the location pin on the map
 * Choose Options from the pop up box
 * Click "List Contiguous Parishes" to find the neighboring parishes

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 (1837–69)
 * Chester (1870–1937)
 * West Cheshire (1937–50)
 * registration events may be searched online at Cheshire BMD

Church Records
Stanlow is an extra parochial area and the closest ecclesiastical parish is Stoak or Stoke.
 * Extra-parochial areas were not attached to parish churches.
 * The residents went to a church of their choosing outside of the parish boundaries.

Poor Law Unions

 * Great Boughton (1837–71) Tarvin (previously Great Boughton) Poor Law Union, Cheshire
 * Chester Poor Law Union(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
Stanlow on GENUKI