Lancashire church records are not all deposited at the Lancashire record office, but at a number of other depositories following local government reorganisation in 1974.

• Lancashire Record Office has the largest holdings and includes those for northern Lancashire. Finding Folk published by the record office holds all the details of the registers they hold.
• Manchester Central library holds the registers for south east Lancashire. Manchester & Lancashire FHS publish a book (frequently referred to as 'The Pink book') recording their holdings. A simplified version of this can be viewed online.
• Liverpool Record Office hold the registers for the Liverpool and Merseyside area.
• Cumbria Record Office (Barrow) and Cumbria Record Office (Kendal) cover Lancashire over the sands that has now become part of Cumbria. Cumbrian Ancestors, Notes for Genealogical Searchers is the book that they publish which includes details of their parish register holdings.

Details of Unitarian Records are provide by the Unitarian Societies.

Hugh Wallis has a comprehensive list of IGI batch numbers. Those for Lancashire are split alphabetically: A-K, L-O and P-Z.

Owen Manuscripts

John Owen was born in Bolton le Moors on 26th May 1815 and came to live in Manchester at the age of two. During his lifetime he recorded a large amount of information in 87 substantial 'notebooks' roughly covering the the topics of:

• Monumental incriptions
• Parish registers
• Genealogical memoranda
• Architecture and archaeology
• Miscellaneous historical notes

The bulk of the Owen MSS refers to southeast Lancashire and east Cheshire but he was quite extensve in his travels which included the Peak District, Shropshire, North Wales Yorkshire and the Isle of Man.

Manchester Archives and Local Studies, Manchester Central Library, hold copies of the manuscripts. The contents list published by the Manchester & Lancashire Family History Society is a good starting point for a dsecription of their contents.

• Parishes A-D
• Parishes E-K
• Parishes L-R
• Parishes S-Z

CD copies of our published registers can be purchased via Genfair. For printed volumes please contact Alan Powell.

You can also view them as a list ordered by volume number.

Work in progress

Registers being prepared for publication.

To order CDs, click the Order Reference number.

To order CDs, click the Order Reference number.

To order CDs, click the Order Reference number.

• The Open Library has made Charles Cox's 1910 publication The parish registers of England available online.

• FamilySearch has a useful page about Marriage Allegations, Bonds and Licences in England and Wales.

• The L.D.S. (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) have now provided online search facilities for the I.G.I. (International Genealogical Index). As well as the general search facility, there is also a Custom Search page allowing more refined searches. Hugh Wallis has provided a search facility which greatly simplifies searching by batch number. See also Finding L.D.S. Batch Numbers.

• The FreeREG Project provides free Internet searches of baptism, marriage, and burial records, which have been transcribed from English and Welsh parish and non-conformist church registers.

• The largest single collection of Parish Register copies and transcripts is at the Society of Genealogists, and these searched for in the (online) catalogue of the library of the Society of Genealogists.

• The contents of missing Parish Registers can often be obtained by finding the copies that since 1598 have had to be made annually and sent to the bishop, i.e the Bishop's Transcripts. The standard source for locating such copies is: J.S.W. Gibson, Bishops' Transcripts and Marriage Licences, Bonds and Allegations. (FFHS Publications).

• Tithe payments, used to support the clergy, are fully explained on this National Archives page - Tithe Records.

• G. Jaunay. A Parish Finder for England, published by Adelaide Proformat: South Plympton, Australia (2000) 468 p. Includes Ordnance Survey references for all English parishes, both ancient and modern, their diocese, deanery and county as at 1974, their date of creation and dedication, indicating for modern parishes the ancient parish(es) from which they were created, etc.

• The Clergy of the Church of England Database (CCEd) is a collaborative project to create a relational database documenting the careers of all Church of England clergymen between 1540 and 1835.

• Stan Mapstone once put online the list, as certified to the Registrar-General, of Denominations in England and Wales in 1867. Unfortunately these disappeared the closure of AOL's hometown pages, if anyone finds them online at another URL, please let me know using the report link below

To order CDs, click the Order Reference number.

Batch numbers are used to identify the sources of records included on the I.G.I. (International Genealogical Index). Now that the L.D.S. (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) have provided online search facilities to this unparalleled resource, but without as yet providing means of limiting name searches to particular localities, batch numbers have become a valuable search aid because they can be used on the >Custom Search page to restrict searches to a particular parish. Unfortunately the L.D.S. have not provided an online index to batch numbers, and unofficial listings, while useful, are very far from complete and are not completely accurate. However, by following the steps below, it is possible to use the existing L.D.S. place search facility to determine batch numbers yourself:-

Please note: batch numbers for entries extracted from Scottish Civil Registration records (1855-1875) do not appear to be available online.

Church

Records

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General

• Find a Church - a Directory of Christian Churches in the UK and Ireland, providing basic location and contact information, details of services, etc. 
• Free searches of parish and nonconformist registers are provided by FreeReg.
• FamilySearch's page on IGI Batch Numbers for the British Isles and North America
• Hugh Wallis provides a batch number search facility, which greatly simplifies the task of searching the I.G.I. for records from particular churches (useful, for example, in case of strangely-spelled names). A further batch number site is provided by Archer Software.
• The LDS also supply additional church baptism and marriage records on their British Vital Records Index (2nd Edition) CD. A breakdown of the number of records included on the BVRI from each county and parish is provided on the Genoots website.(archived copy)
• Glossary of terms related to church records, by Martyn Parsons.
• The Official Non-Parochial BMD Records Service - a free index search facility for various unpublished registries from 1534 to 1865, from National Archives Refrences RG4 and RG5, with a pay-per-view access to the original records.
• The National Archives provides a Research Guide on Nonconformists - advice on TNA's holdings

Lyon-Turner, G. Original Records of Early Nonconformity Under Persecution and Indulgence - 3 vols. T. Fisher Unwin, London (1911) [Online copies: Vol 1, Vol 2, Vol 3]

Anglican

Two major marriage licence indexing projects: the Faculty Office Marriage Licence Index (of licences issued by the Master of Faculties of the Archbishop of Canterbury for the period 1714 to 1850), and the Vicar-General Marriage Licence Index (of licences issued by the Vicar-General of the Archbishop of Canterbury for the period 1701 to 1850 undertaken by the SoG are now on www.findmypast.co.uk.

• Free searches of parish registers are provided by FamilySearch.
• Commercial register search sites include Ancestry, TheGenealogist, and www.findmypast.co.uk.
• An article on clandestine marriages - by Jennifer M. Payne.

M.W. Foster. "A Comedy of Errors" or "The Marriage Records of England and Wales, 1837-1899", 19 Khouri Avenue, Wellington 6005, New Zealand, (1998) 223 p. [ISBN 0 473 05581 3]

Baptist

• The Baptist Historical Society - general information.
• The Catholic Archive Society website provides information about the Society and a full Catalogue of its publications.
• The Catholic Central Library has moved to Durham University library.
• Catholic Heritage - website of a project to provide a centralised access point to an online collection of Archive and Library catalogues within the Catholic Church

Breed, Geoffrey. My Ancestors were Baptists (4th ed.). Society of Genealogists (2002) 135 pp. [ISBN: 1903462525]
[". . . a history of the church plus valuable information on what records can be obtained. A complete listing of all Baptist churches and dates by county and appendices showing for instance the important collection in Dr Williams Library.."]

Congregationalists

• Surnam Index Online - a biographical index to the names of 32,000 Congregational Ministers from the mid-seventeenth century to 1972, with "where known, their dates, details of their education, ministries or other employment", provided by the Queen Mary Centre for Religion and Literature in English.

Clifford, David J.H. My ancestors were Congregationalists in England and Wales: how can I find out more about them?, Society of Genealogists (1997) 77 pp. [ISBN: 0946789460]
["Following a useful introduction this book comprises a location list by county of Independent and Congregationalist registers to 1850. Many exist outside the Public Record Office. Details of chapels where no registers have been located are also included."]

Huguenot

Randolph Vigne. Huguenot Family Research Made Easier, Genealogist's Magazine 27, 10 (June 2003) pp. 447-449.

Inghamites

Oates, P.J. My Ancestors Were Inghamites, Society of Genealogists (2003) 149 pp. [ISBN 1 903462 77 0]
["Includes a brief history of the Inghamites, sections on chapels and their records, index of people referred to in the conference books of the Inghamites Societies, various baptism and lists of members."]

Jewish

Joseph, Austen. My Ancestors were Jewish (3rd ed.), Society of Genealogists (2002) 60 pp. [ISBN: 1903462630]
["Covers the emancipation of Jews in Europe, marriage, death and burials, census, secular records, surname information, information on repositories, internet and more."]

Methodist

• The Methodist Archives and Research Centre is located at John Rylands University Library of Manchester, and provides the page Researching Methodist History.
• Information about Wesleyan Methodist ministers 1847-9 supplied by Bob Bester.

Leary, William. My Ancestors were Methodists (3rd ed.), Society of Genealogists (1997) 116 pp. [ISBN: 1859514030]
["The main text [of this 3rd edition] has not changed but the appendixes detailing holdings in the SoG have been revised and updated thoroughly. The book explains the records of Methodism and what to expect from these records."]