Parish Registers

Anglican Parishes have been obliged to keep registers of baptisms, burials and weddings since 1538. Civic registration of births, marriages and deaths wasn't introduced until 1837.

You may need a particular record to prove, for example, that you were baptised, before getting married in a Roman Catholic church, or before getting confirmed. Funeral directors often ask us to locate a grave for a further burial.

Otherwise, family history is important to many people, and locating records of past generations can be an absorbing hobby. We are happy to assist with such enquiries as and when time allows. The need to locate a grave for an imminent interment would tend to take priority, for example! There is actually a fee for this service, currently £ for a 'straightforward' search, reflecting the time that such searches can take.

Burial and Grave Registers

Starting point for any search for a grave, apart from a name, is an exact as possible date of burial. There are two steps to locating a grave. Firstly, an entry must be found in the burial registers, which are in date order. Knowing the year is a start, but after that you are searching for the name. Hence it can take a while.

With each entry in the burial register (later ones at least) should be a grave reference. This can then be looked up in the relevant grave register. These are registers of graves, so list all the people whose remains were buried in any particular grave. Each entry should have a cross-reference back to the relevant burial register entry. (There are registers for burial plots (graves) and cremation plots or Garden of Rest (tablet or vase).)

St Peter's register of burials and baptism 1719-1783

A note showing the 'new stile' date (a few months before the Gregorian calendar actually replaced the Julian one).

In the case of St Peter's, our burial registers go back to 1913, though the 1913-36 register unfortunately does not have the cross-reference to the grave registers. The latter go back to the 1895 cemetery extension. Prior to that, the burial registers have been deposited with the Cheshire Record Office. Of the oldest graves round the church, we have some written information that local family history society and other volunteers have put together over the years.

The family history society catalogued the graves round St Stephen's church in 2001, St John's in 2002 and Holy Trinity in 2003. St Peter's took much longer, and was done in stages between 2006 and 2011.

Where such information has made it as far as a computer and is searchable, finding names becomes much easier. It would be good if the information we have could be made available here to search, but time constraints will likely stifle that aspiration. In the meantime, please direct any enquiries, preferably by email initially, to the Parish administrator, who will undertake or arrange a search to be made at the individual church in question as soon as time allows.

Clasp on St Peter's 1719-1783 register

Marriage Registers

Marriages were recorded in separate registers from 1754. From 1837, since when births, marriages and deaths have been recorded by local and national register offices, churches kept two registers and made quarterly returns to the local register office. Once a register was full, the church would retain one register and send the other to the registrar.

It was from their marriage registers that churches used to be able to issue certified copies of entries (aka marriage certificate). Since the changes in marriage registration that came into force on 4th May 2021, churches may no longer issue marriage certificates, even for marriages that took place before that date. They can be obtained from the register office local to the church in question (Crewe for us), or from the General Register Office (see here). See these links for more info:
- Cheshire East
- GOV.UK

We can still provide copies of marriage (and burial/baptism) entries from registers still in our possession (fees may apply), but these will not be in the form of the earlier certificates and will have no legal status.

Goto Top