Pilling, Lancashire Genealogy

England Lancashire  Lancashire Parishes

Chapelry History
Pilling is an Ecclesiastical Parish in the county of Lancashire, created in 1756 from chapelry in  Garstang,_Lancashire Ancient Parish and   Cockerham,_Lancashire Ancient Parish.

St John the Baptist was built by the Lancaster firm of Paley &amp; Austin in 1885-87 at a cost of £7,000. It is a large church with a spire recessed in the west tower and replacement for the earlier church in the same churchyard. The old chapel founded in the fifteenth Centuryis now in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust

PILLING, a chapelry, in the parish and union of Garstang, hundred of Amounderness, N. division of Lancashire, 7½ miles (W. by N.) from Garstang; containing 1232 inhabitants. "Pilyn" was possessed by the abbey of Cockersand until the Dissolution, when Henry VIII. granted lands here to the Kitchin family of Hatfield, Herts, whose heiress conveyed them by marriage to Robert Dalton, of Thurnham, Esq. Frances, daughter of John Dalton (who died in 1777), brought Pilling by marriage to Humphrey Trafford, Esq., of Croston, from whose family it passed to several owners: the present lords of the manor are, Edmund Hornby, Esq., of Dalton Hall, near Burton-in-Kendal, and John Gardner, Esq., of Sion Hill, Bonds, near Garstang. The chapelry is on the shore of Morecambe bay, and comprises 2066 acres of arable land, 2062 acres meadow and pasture, 4 wood, 875 uncultivated moss, 381 green marsh, and 1500 acres sands occasionally overflowed by the tide. The surface is nearly level, and the soil of the improved land siliceous, with a clayey subsoil. A considerable portion of land has been reclaimed from the moss within the last forty years; and since Richard Cardwell Gardner, Esq., became the owner of the Brickhouse estate, Priest Cottage, and other valuable property in the neighbourhood, the township has been much improved, that gentleman having laid out a large amount with this object. Agriculture is the chief support of the inhabitants: a few families employ themselves in fishing. The living is a perpetual curacy; net income, £107, with a parsonage-house, built in 1830; patrons, E. Hornby, and John Gardner, Esqrs.; impropriators, Messrs. Standish and Benison, whose tithes, arising from 4598 acres of land, have been commuted for £665. The chapel is a plain structure, erected in 1719-21. There is a place of worship for Wesleyans. Robert Carter, in 1710, gave some property towards the support of a school, of which the income is now about £20 per annum. In the moss is some bog-iron ore; and considerable organic remains of the red-deer have been found in the silt under the clay here: many of these are in the possession of Mr. J. D. Banister.

From: A Topographical Dictionary of England by Samuel Lewis (1848), pp. 567-571. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=51213 Date accessed: 20 July 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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 * England Jurisdictions 1851
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Web sites
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