Bispham, Lancashire Genealogy

Guide to Bispham, Lancashire ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish register transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records. See the Chapelries in Bispham Parish

Parish History
BISPHAM (All Hallows) is an Ancient Parish known as the Mother Church of Blackpool in the union of the Fylde ,hundred of Amounderness, N. division of the county of Lancaster; comprising the townships of Bispham with Norbreck, and Layton with Warbreck. It is the third church on the site and was built in 1883. Until 1821 the parish church of Bispham was the only place of worship in Blackpool. Other places in the parish include: Bispham with Norbeck, Southshore, Layton with Warbrick, Norbreck.

The earliest reference to the church dates from the reign of Richard I of England, when Theobold Walter passed on his rights to the churches of Poulton-le-Fylde and Bispham to St Mary’s of Lancaster. Another reference in 1345, from the records of the Archdiocese of Richmond, tells of the lamentable state of disrepair of both the church of Poulton and the chapel of Bispham, implying that Bispham was a chapel annexed to the parish of Poulton.

In 1351, in the aftermath of the Black Death, the Archdeacon made a visit to ascertain whether the chapel had sufficient parishioners to make it viable as a place of worship, and also inquired of St Mary’s of Lancaster by what right they held the claim to Bispham. The Archdeacon was evidently persuaded not to sell off the chapelery and its lands.

The first mention of Blackpool is found in the Register of Bispham Parish Church in 1602 in which is recorded the Christinary on 22 September of that year of a child belonging to a couple who reside on the bank of the Black Pool.

Eighteenth century records show that there existed a church of red sandstone, with a double-gable roof, supported by oaken pillars, laid down in the centre of the nave. There was a separate chancel, black oak pews in the nave, with three lancet windows in the East end and a low tower at the West.

In 1773, the pillars were deemed unsafe and removed and the building heightened, but by the middle of the nineteenth century, the church was in danger of collapse, and in 1883 had to be demolished. A new church of limestone was built on the same site. The churchyard contains the tombs of many shipwreck victims, including the captain and crew of the brig Favorite, which sank off Blackpool in 1865, and passengers from the Ocean Monarch, which caught fire in the Irish Sea in 1848.

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

Lancashire Online Parish Clerks
An extremely useful resource for research in Lancashire Parishes http://www.lan-opc.org.uk/

Church records

 * 1538 - 1910 at FamilySearch — index
 * 1603 - 1910 at FamilySearch — index and images

There is much online content for Bispham All Hallows Parish and its attached churches, called chapelries, including baptisms, marriages and some burials. These records include vital content from the following chapels and the (All Hallows) parish:

Catholic

 * 1628 - 1628 List of Recusants in Bispham (p. 174)

Genealogy
Burrows, Constance: Holt of Tottington: From a Family Bible. Family tree of James Holt and Jane Crampton married in Bury 1716, with the following descendant surnames. Wolfenden, Amphlett, Cunliffe, Roscow, scattered through, Prestwich, Bispham, and Whitefield, dating from 1716-1983, to be found in The Lancashire Family History and Heraldry Soc. Magazine vol. 10, no.4. pages 28-29.

Poor Law Unions
Fylde 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.

Taxation

 * 1628 - 1628 Subsidy of Bisphame (p. 166)


 * 1665 - Lancashire Hearth Tax: Leyland Hundred, Bispham. E 179/132/351, The National Archives. Microfilm:.

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

Websites
Bishopham on GENUKI