Dendron, Lancashire Genealogy

England Lancashire  Lancashire Parishes

Chapelry History
Dendron St Matthew was an Ecclesiastical Parish in the county of Lancashire, created in 1773 from Aldingham,_Lancashire  Ancient Parish.

The village is mentioned in the Domesday Book as Dene, and the name is thought to mean sheltering place for deer - it is only a coincidence that it is the same as the Greek for tree.

The most notable feature of the village is the 17th century St Matthew's Church. It was originally built as a chapel of ease in 1642, and it spent most of its early life as a school for the village children.

In 1652, the famous Quaker George Fox preached with some success at the chapel and noted that "no priest had ever preached in it" before this time. It was not until 1671 that a Minister was properly appointed to serve Dendron.

The renowned artist George Romney, born in nearby Dalton, was educated for a short time at the school but was removed in 1745 by his father because he had failed to make any progress.

In 1833 a new schoolroom was built opposite the churchyard, replacing what had once been a cockpit, and in the same year the vicarage was built. The schoolroom still stands today as a meeting room and Sunday school, but was replaced in the 1870s by another, larger building some distance south of the village in which were educated most of the children from the villages of Dendron, Leece and Gleaston. This building later became a primary school, but in 1994 it ceased to be a school at all when it was amalgamated with two other small rural schools into Low Furness C of E School in Urswick; it is now a house. Beside it stands a War Memorial commemorating parishioners lost in the First World War.

Dendron did not become a parish church until 1892.

The modern parish is in the Diocese of Carlisle the village has since 1974 been in Cumbria.

DENDRON, a chapelry, in the parish of Aldingham, union of Ulverston, hundred of Lonsdale north of the Sands, county of Lancaster, 2½ miles (S. S. E.) from Dalton. This place lies west-by-south of the church of Aldingham, and includes Leece, a small township containing a few farmhouses, in one of the most fertile and salubrious parts of Low Furness, where the eminences are gently swelling mounts, and the vales narrow and winding. The living is a perpetual curacy; net income, £80; patron, the Rector of Aldingham. The chapel, erected by Robert Dickenson in 1642, was rebuilt about 70 years ago, at the expense of Thomas Green, Esq., of London. Robert Dickenson, in 1644, also founded a school, with an endowment.

From: A Topographical Dictionary of England by Samuel Lewis (1848), pp. 28-32. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=50917 Date accessed: 29 June 2010.

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
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Census records
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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.

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Web sites
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