Lye, Worcestershire Family History Guide

Lye, an ecclesiastical district, in the parish of Old Swinford formed in 1843 from a chapelry in Kingswinford St Mary, Staffordshire.

Status: Ecclesiastical Parish

Parish church: Christ Church

Parish registers begin:

Parish registers: 1839
Bishop’s Transcripts: None

Nonconformists include: Independents, Wesleyans, Primitive Methodists, Unitarians Baptists, and Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints.

Table of Contents

Adjacent Parishes

Parish History

The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales 1870

LYE, a village, a township, and a chapelry, in Old Swinford parish, Worcester.

The village stands adjacent to the Stourbridge and Cradley railway, near the boundary with Stafford, 1½ mile E by N of Stourbridge; is irregularly built; and has a station on the railway, and a post office under Stourbridge.

The township includes the village, and a considerable surrounding tract. Pop. in 1851, 4,446; in 1861, 5,255. Houses, 1,057. The increase of pop. arose from the extension of chain, crucible, and Stourbridge fire-brick manufactures. These manufactures, and those of anvils, vices, and nails are largely carried on.

Carless-Green village, immediately E of Lye village, is noted for insurance clubs called Stewpony societies, and for an institution designed to improve the condition of the labouring classes, called the Stewpony Allotment Society.

Lye Waste, around Lye village, took its name from being an uncultivated appendage to Lye, but became settled by a numerous body of men, who acquired a right of separate freehold on the passing of an enclosure act, and is now thickly built over.

The chapelry was constituted in 1843. Pop. in 1861,6,772. Houses, 1,354. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Worcester. Value, £300. Patron, the Bishop of Worcester. The church is a neat edifice; and was repaired and improved in 1858, at a cost of £2,000.

There are chapels for Independents, Wesleyans, Primitive Methodists, and Unitarians, four national and infant schools, and a working men’s institute.

Source: The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales [Wilson, John M]. A. Fullarton & Co. N. d. c. [1870-72].