Beltingham, Northumberland Genealogy

= Parish History =

St Cuthbert Beltingham was created as a chapelry within Haltwhistle,_Northumberland parish in 1830. The following indicates a much older chapelry:

Perpendicular, oldest parts fifteenth century, masons marks in windows. Stained glass in memory of Lowes family and Douglas Smiths and in thanksgiving for safety of members of the Bowes-Lyon family in 1904 accident. Tablet in memory of Rev. Anthony Hedley of Vindolanda fame (died 1856). Bishop Nicholas Ridley possibly baptised in the church. Organ, one-manual Harrison. [The Newcastle Diocesan Gazetteer (1982), page 46.]

The living is a vicarage, valued in the king's books at £12. 3. 1½., and in the patronage of the Bishop of Durham, with a net income of £593, and a glebe; impropriator, Sir Edward Blackett, Bart. The vicarial tithes for the townships of Melkridge and Henshaw were commuted on the inclosure of common land upwards of 35 years ago, for a farm called the Vicar's Allotment. The church is an ancient structure in the decorated English style, situated on a slope, between which and the river an alluvial plain or haugh of no great breadth intervenes; it contains a monument to the memory of a crusader. At Beltingham is an ancient endowed chapel, a handsome edifice; and at Greenhead another chapel, erected in 1828: the livings of both are perpetual curacies in the patronage of the Vicar. There are places of worship in the parish for Independents, Presbyterians, Primitive Methodists, Wesleyans, and the Society of Friends. A school, now conducted on the national system, was endowed in 1721 by Lady Capel, with the twelfth part of an estate at Faversham, in Kent. The poor law union of Haltwhistle includes the whole of the western division of Tindale ward, and contains five parishes, comprising eighteen townships, with a population of 5949. The Roman wall intersects the parish from east to west, and in some places may be distinctly traced, with the ditches on both sides, on a line with the ancient road from Newcastle to Carlisle; it is carried along the verge of the crags before mentioned, its stations, castles, and towers once mingling with their saw-like and spiral forms. The martyred Bishop Ridley was a native of the parish.

From: 'Halton - Hambleden', A Topographical Dictionary of England (1848), pp. 383-387. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=51000 Date accessed: 14 March 2011.

= Parish Records =

Durham University Library Archives and Special Collections DDR/EA/PBT/2/22 year 1812 Parish Register transcripts are available to search free online at Record Search. The images have not yet been loaded on Record Search.

The dates of the post-1760 transcripts have been noted in detail and sometimes only cover years. For most parishes in the collection there are gaps in the sequence of transcripts. It is advisable to consult the original parish registers for these years and events.

Beltingham, St Cuthbert: Records of baptisms 1891-1956, marriages 1891-1978 and burials 1881-1941 are available at Northumberland_Collections_Service

A transcript of monumental inscriptions at Haltwhistle and Beltingham (microfiche TN73) is published by Northumberland and Durham Family History Society and these records are also available in book form at Newcastle Central Library, Local Studies Department.