Chester St John the Baptist, CheshireEdit This Page

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St John Church Chester.jpg

Parish History

In 1870 - CHESTER, a city and two sub-districts in Great Boughton district, Cheshire; and a diocese in Cheshire and part of Lancashire. The city stands on the river Dee and on the Via Devana, 5 miles SE of the head of the Dee's estuary, and 16, through Birkenhead, SSE of Liverpool.
The places of worship within the city, in 1851, were 15 of the Church of England; one of them was St. John the Baptist.^[1]

Chester, St. John the Baptist, Vicars Lane. An ancient parish church, originally serving part of the city centre and a small part of Hoole

St John the Baptist's Church, Chester is in the city of Chester,although it lies outside the city walls on a cliff above the north bank of the River Dee.

The church was reputedly founded by King Aethelred in 689. During the 11th century, Earl Leofric was a "great benefactor" of the church. In 1075 Peter, Bishop of Lichfield moved the seat of his see to Chester, making St John's his cathedral until he died in 1085. Peter's successor moved his seat to Coventry and St John's became a co-cathedral.

The exterior of the church contains a few tombstones that remain in their original positions. The vast majority of the gravestones have now been repositioned and laid to the ground forming the footpaths immediately in front of the church. In 2009 a research project recorded the inscriptions on the remaining tombs and gravestones.

St John East Ruins Chester contributor David Dixon.jpg

Resources

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.

Church records

Chester St. John the Baptist parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials have been indexed by the following groups:

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.

Registers of Baptisms 1559–1940, Marriages 1559–1956 and Burials 1559–1915 have been deposited at the Cheshire Record Office.

Bishop's Transcripts Microfilm of originals in the Cheshire Record Office, Chester reference: EDB 54

Non-Conformist Churches

Census records

Census records from 1841-1891 are available on film through a Family History Center or at the Family History Library. The first film number is 241255. To view these census images online, they are available through the following websites for a fee ($) or free:

• FamilySearch has some of the British Censuses available.
• FindMyPast ($) has all available census records including images, and is free at Family History Centers and the Family History Library and some public and academic libraries.
• Ancestry.co.uk ($) has now all available census records but free at Family History Centers and the Family History Library and at numerous public and academic libraries. The library versions are known as AncestryInstitution.com.
• The Genealogist.co.uk ($) has all available censuses and is free at Family History Centers and the Family History Library and various other libraries.
• FreeCen is a UK census searches. It is not complete and individuals are always asked to consider helping out with transcriptions.
  

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.

Poor Law Unions

Chester Poor Law Union

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

Bibliography

• Clifton-Taylor, Alec (1974), English Parish Churches as Work of Art, London: Batsford, ISBN 0 7134 2776 0
• Morant, Roland W. (1989), Cheshire Churches, Birkenhead: Countyvise, ISBN 0 907768 18 0
• Pevsner, Nikolaus; Hubbard, Edward (2003) [1971], The Buildings of England: Cheshire, New Haven: Yale University Press, ISBN 0 300 09588 0
• Richards, Raymond (1947), Old Cheshire Churches, London: Batsford
• Salter, Mark (1995), The Old Parish Churches of Cheshire, Malvern: Folly Publications, ISBN 1871731232
• Ward, Simon (2009), Chester: A History, Chichester: Phillimore, ISBN 978 1 86077 499 7
  
  

Web sites

References

This section requires expansion with: any additional relevant sites that aren't mentioned above.

• This page was last modified on 19 March 2013, at 15:21.
• This page has been accessed 747 times.