Sedgley, Staffordshire Genealogy

England Staffordshire  Staffordshire Parishes



Parish History
Sedgley All Saints is an Ancient Parish in the county of Staffordshire. Other places in the parish include: Brierley, Cotwal End, Cotwall End, Gospel End, Gospelend, and Woodsetton.

All Saints' Church is a parish church which is situated in the town centre. The first All Saints' Church was built during the 12th century but the current structure was completed in 1805 and has a capacity to seat more than 1,300 people. The organ which was fitted in the church on its completion had originally been in Westminster Abbey. The church is located on the corner of Vicar Street and Dean Street, with the modern vicarage and church hall on the opposite side of Vicar Street.

At the time, it was the only parish church in the large but relatively lightly populated parish of Sedgley, but the parish was later divided into five ecclesiastical districts - Sedgley, Lower Gornal, Upper Gornal, Ettingshall and Coseley. Each of these newly-created parishes had their own church.

The place name Sedgley was first mentioned in a 985 charter from King Æthelred to Lady Wulfrūn, when describing the Wolverhampton border. The original Old English place name was 'Secg's lēah' - Secg being a personal name (meaning sword bearing man or warrior) and lēah meaning wood, glade or woodland clearing (so, the lēah belonging to Secg).

In 1897, the villages of Coseley, Ettingshall and Brierley broke away from the Manor of Sedgley to form the Coseley Urban District Council. At the same time, Sedgley Urban District Council was formed to include the rest of the manor, apart from Gospel End - which then became part of Seisdon Rural District, although it is still part of the Sedgley DY3 postal district. The entire area was part of the Wolverhampton Parliamentary Borough, created in 1832.

Sedgley Urban District Council survived until 1966 when the majority of the area became part of Dudley County Borough, which at the same time also took in the urban district councils of Coseley and Brierley Hill. Some parts of Sedgley were placed in South Staffordshire and Wolverhampton, while small sections of Coseley became part of Sandwell and Wolverhampton.

Sedgley developed from a village into a town after World War I when thousands of residential and commercial properties were developed across the area by the council and by private developers. Most of the houses in Sedgley were built in the 1950s and 1960s, in response to the development of Baggeridge Colliery which closed on March 2, 1968. The land was bought by Seisdon Rural District Council and it was granted country park status in 1970. On January 12, 1981, full reclamation of the land commenced.

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.

See West Midlands BMD and Staffordshire BMD

Church records
Deposited parish registers at Dudley Archives; Staffordshire Record Office have microform only Bap 1558-1899 Mar 1558-1954 Bur  1558-1923 Lichfield Record Office holdings of Bishop's Transcripts Bap 1673-1853 Mar 1673-1832 Bur 1673-1853 Missing Bap 1833-1836, Mar 1831, Bur 1831, 1833-1836

Include here information for parish registers, Bishop’s Transcripts and other types of church records, such as parish chest records. Add the contact information for the office holding the original records. Add links to the Family History Library Catalog showing the film numbers in their collection

Poor Law Unions
Dudley Poor Law Union, Staffordshire

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