Penshaw Durham Family History Guide
Penshaw is an Ecclesiastical Parish in the county of Durham, created in 1752 from a chapelry in Houghton le Spring Ancient Parish.
Other places in the parish include: Newbottle, Offerton, South Biddick, Murnmoor, and Bournmoor.
Alternative names: Pensher, Painshaw
Parish church:
Parish registers begin:
- Parish registers: 1754
- Bishop’s Transcripts: 1762
Nonconformists include: Methodist New Connexion, Primitive Methodist, Wesleyan Methodist, and Wesleyan Methodist Association.
Table of Contents
Adjacent Parishes
Parish History
The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales 1870
PAINSHAW, Penshaw, or Pensher, a village, a township, and a chapelry, in Houghton-le-Spring parish, Durham.
The village stands on an eminence, adjacent to a junction of the Sunderland and Durham railway with a line to South Shields and near the river Wear, 5¾ miles SW by W of Sunderland; takes its name from the words Pen and Shaw, signifying “a hill” and “a wood;” consists of two parts, called Old Painshaw and New Painshaw; and has a station at the railway junction. The Victoria bridge takes the railway over the Wear, in the vicinity of the village; was erected in 1838, at a cost of about £35,000; and measures 710 feet in length, 21 feet in width, and 130 feet in height.
The township comprises 1,066 acres. Real property, £7, 536; of which £1, 800 are in mines, and £1, 475 in quarries. Pop., 2,075. Houses, 426. Coal-works here belong to the Marchioness of Londonderry. An open Doric temple, 100 feet long, 53 feet wide, and 70 feet high, stands on Penshaw Hill; was erected in 1844-5, to the memory of the first Earl of Durham; and commands an extensive panoramic view.
The chapelry is more extensive than the township, and was constituted in 1838, and reconstituted in 1846. Post-town, Fence-Houses. Pop. in 1861, 3, 537. Houses, 726. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Durham. Value, £380. Patron, the Bishop of Manchester. The church was built in 1754.
There are a Wesleyan chapel, and a recently erected parochial school.
A section of the chapelry was constituted a separate charge in 1866; bears the name of Barnmoor; and is a p. curacy of the value of £200, in the patronage of alternately the Crown and the Bishop of Durham.
Source: The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales [Wilson, John M]. A. Fullarton & Co. N. d. c. [1870-72].
Parish Records
FamilySearch
Penshaw
New Penshaw
Administration
- County: Durham
- Civil Registration District: Houghton le Spring
- Probate Court: Court of the Bishop of Durham (Episcopal Consistory)
- Diocese: Durham
- Rural Deanery: Easington
- Poor Law Union: Houghton le Spring
- Hundred: Easington Ward
- Province: York