West Rounton, Yorkshire Genealogy

Guide to West Rounton, Yorkshire ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
West Rounton is an Ancient parish. St Oswald’s dates from the 12th century but was completely rebuilt in the “Norman style” in about 1860. St Oswald’s displays its original Norman heritage in its elaborately carved south doorway and chancel arch. These are the only parts of the original church which remain. There is an unusual carved Anglo-Saxon font depicting an archer (centaur?) and other symbols. On the north side there is evidence of an early doorway, now blocked. There is a splendid stained glass window depicting St Oswald, installed as a Millennium project in 2000. There are other interesting examples of stained glass in the East and West windows.

ROUNCTON, WEST (St. James), a parish, in the union of Northallerton, wapentake of Allertonshire, N. riding of York, 7½ miles (S. by W.) from Yarm.

Civil Registration
Records from the Northallerton registration district held at the North Yorkshire Registration Service are included in the online index available at Yorkshire BMD for post 1837 events; view the coverage table to check progress on the availability of index search.

Marriages include


 * Church of England marriages.
 * Civil Marriages at register offices, or non-conformist churches where a registrar was required to be present at the ceremony.
 * Authorised Person marriages. These cover the non-conformist places of worship which applied to keep their own registers as a result of the Marriage Act, 1898 (bringing them into line with Jewish and Quaker marriages which had this status since 1837). In such cases an 'Authorised Person' (usually the minister or priest) recorded the ceremony instead of the registrar. Earlier weddings in these places would be included with civil marriage registers.

A secondary index of 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 however this secondary index may omit the event and may not contain the detail of the Yorkshire BMD index

Church Records
Online data content from chapelry registers of West Rounton exists at some of the following websites and for the specified ranges of years:

To find the names of the neighbouring parishes, use England Jurisdictions 1851. In this site, search for the name of the parish, click on the location "pin", click Options and click List contiguous parishes.

You can search the partial Bishop's transcripts from the Diocese of Durham for free at FamilySearch Historical Records. The collection is partial and held at the Durham University Library in the Howe MSS collection under reference HBT 52-58 for years 1709 (2 sheets the second of which is blank) 25 March1729- 25 March 1732, 25 March 1733- 25 March 1735.

Records are also available at the North Yorkshire County Record Office.

Poor Law Unions
Northallerton Poor Law Union, Yorkshire

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

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