Cheltenham St Paul, Gloucestershire Genealogy

Guide to Cheltenham St Paul, Gloucestershire ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
CHELTENHAM (St. Mary), a borough, market town, and parish, and the head of a union, in the hundred of Cheltenham, E. division of the county of Gloucester, 9 miles (E. N. E.) from Gloucester, and 95 (W. N. W.) from London. The church of the Holy Trinity, in Portland-street, a handsome structure in the later English style, was erected by subscription, but finished by Lord Sherborne, and was consecrated in 1823.St. Paul's church, an edifice of the Grecian-Ionic order, with a portico and tower, was completed in 1831. This, also, is a chapel of ease to the parent church. St. James' church, Suffolksquare, St. John's, Berkeley-street, and Christ-Church, Lansdowne, were erected under what is called the Forty Years' act, 5 George IV. Another church, St. Peter's, on the Tewkesbury road, was commenced in 1847. There are places of worship for Baptists, the Society of Friends, the Connexion of the Countess of Huntingdon, Independents, Wesleyan and other Methodists, and Roman Catholics. St. Paul’s Church was designed by John Forbes, the famous architect of Cheltenham’s Pittville Pump Room in 1827 for the artisans congregation of this area.

This Greek Revival style building with a columned façade and cupola tower was built under the leadership of the Rev. Francis Close as a free church and paid for by voluntary subscriptions where unlike in other churches seats did not have to be paid for. Joseph Pitt, the developer of Pittville Estate, donated the plot of land. The ecclesiastical parish of St. Paul's was formed in 1846. The north chapel was added in 1932. Its stained glass comes from 1963

St Paul’s was built to be the first ‘free’ church in Cheltenham, back in the days when you had to pay to go to church. The then vicar of Cheltenham saw the rich coming to his church but their servants had nowhere to go, so he set about building a church for the poor, a church where you didn't have to pay to worship God. That was in 1831, a lot has changed, but the mission is still the same.

In 2006 we formed a partnership with Trinity Church Cheltenham and in mid 2007 a number of people came from Trinity to join us on our mission at St Paul’s.

Today we’re a small but growing church, committed to worshiping the risen Jesus and to serving our local community in the power of the Holy Spirit.

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
parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

Non-Conformist Churches

 * 1717 England & Wales, Roman Catholics, 1717 at FindMyPast ($), index and images
 * 1642-1996 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index (dates may vary by parish)

Probate Records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Gloucestershire Probate Records to find the name of the court having primary jurisdiction. Scroll down in the article to the section Court Jurisdictions by Parish.

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