Ormskirk, Lancashire Genealogy

England Lancashire  Lancashire Parishes

Guide to Ormskirk, Lancashire 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.

Here is List of Chapelries in Ormskirk Parish

[[Image:Ormskirk Parish Church.JPG|thumb|right|Ormskirk Parish Church.JPG]]Parish History
Ormskirk St Peter and Paul is an Ancient Parish and a market town in the county of Lancashire. Scarisbrick is a chapelry of Ormskirk.Other places in the parish include: Newburgh, Bickerstaffe, Burscough, Lathom, and Skelmersdale.

The Church of St Peter and St Paul is in the market town of Ormskirk, Lancashire, England. Dating from no later than the 12th century, it is one of only three churches in England to have both a western tower and a central spire, and the only one to have them both at the same end of the church. It is an active Anglican parish church in the Diocese of Liverpool. It has been designated a Grade II* listed building by English Heritage. The exact date of the foundation of a church in Ormskirk is unclear, although it is likely that there was a church on the site of the present one in Saxon time. The Anglican parish of Ormskirk encompassed the settlements of Lathom, Burscough, Bickerstaffe, Scarisbrick and Skelmersdale. Parts of the present church existed in the 12th century, although the building has been altered and added to over successive centuries.

Here is an 1848 historical perspective of Ormskirk by the topographer, Samuel A. Lewis:

"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, 13 miles north by northeast of Liverpool.

Another church was erected here in 1848; and at Bickerstaffe, Burscough, Lathom, and Skelmersdale are also chapels.

There are places of worship for Independents, Unitarians, and Wesleyans; also a Roman Catholic chapel, built about a century ago, and dedicated to St. Oswald.

Civil Registration
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.

Online index of Lancashire Births, Marriages and Deaths Lancashire BMD

Church records
Online Records

Ormskirk St Peter &amp; St Paul's parish registers and those registers of all of its smaller chapelries lying within its boundaries have been mostly transcribed and are displayed online at the following web sites and ranges of years:

Poor Law Unions
Ormskirk Poor Law Union, Lancashire

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Lancashire 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

Web sites
The Ormskirk and District Family History Society