Sedbergh Yorkshire Family History Guide
Sedbergh is an Ancient Parish and a market town in the county of Yorkshire.
Other places in the parish include: Dowbiggin, Cautley and Dowbiggin, Cautley, Cantley, Soobank, Marthwaite, Frostrow and Soolbank, and Frastrow.
Alternative names:
Parish church: St. Andrew
Parish registers begin:
- Parish registers: 1594
- Bishop’s Transcripts: 1673
Nonconformists include: Independent/Congregational, Society of Friends/Quaker, and Wesleyan Methodist.
Table of Contents
Adjacent Parishes
- Firbank, Westmorland
- Middleton, Westmorland
- Dent
- Killington, Westmorland
- Mallerstang, Westmorland
- Garsdale
- Howgill
- Ravenstonedale, Westmorland
- Orton, Westmorland
Parish History
The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales 1870
SEDBERGH, a small town, a township, a parish, and a district, in W. R. Yorkshire.
The town stands on the river Rowther, in a romantic mountain vale, 1 mile E of the Ingleton railway, and of the boundary with Westmoreland, and 10 N by E of Kirkby-Lonsdale.
It is a seat of petty sessions and manorial courts; and has a post-office under Kendal, a r. station, a banking office, three chief inns, a market house and reading-room, a working-men’s library and news room, a Norman church, three dissenting chapels, a grammar school, with £464 a year from endowment, and with seven exhibitions at St. John’s College, Cambridge, a national school, a British school, a book-club, an agricultural society, alms-houses, a work-house, and charities £255.
A weekly market is held on Wednesday; cattle fairs are held on 26 Feb., 20 March, 28 April, and 29 Oct.; pleasure fairs are held on Whit-Wednesday and the Wednesday after 3 Oct.; and there are a cotton mill and two woollen mills.
The township contains also seven hamlets, and comprises 21, 402 acres. Real property, £10, 628; of which £456 are in mines, and £12 in quarries. Pop. in 1851, 2, 235; in 1861, 2, 346. Houses, 464. Ingmire Hall, the seat of Miss Upton, is the chief residence.
The parish contains also the townships of Dent and Garsdale, and comprises, 52, 828 acres. Pop. in 1851, 4, 574; in 1861, 4, 391. Houses, 913.
The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Ripon. Value, £400. patron, Trinity College, Cambridge.
The chapelries of Dent, Garsdale, Howgill, Kirkthwaite, and Cautley-with-Dowbiggin, are separate benefices.
The district is conterminate with the parish. Poor-rates in 1863, £1, 433. Marriages in 1863, 21; births, 131, of which 14 were illegitimate; deaths, 75, of which 21 were at ages under 5 years, and 2 at ages above 85. Marriages in the ten years 1851-60, 305; births, 1, 399; deaths, 863.
The places of worship, in 1851, were 6 of the Church of England, with 1,816 sittings; 2 of Independents, with 700 s.; 4 of Quakers, with 540 s.; 4 of Wesleyans, with 866 s.; and 2 of Primitive Methodists, with 415 s.
The schools were 9 public day schools, with 500 scholars; 6 private day-schools, with 129 s.; and 14 Sunday-schools, with 905 s.
Source: The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales [Wilson, John M]. A. Fullarton & Co. N. d. c. [1870-72].
A Topographical Dictionary of England 1848
SEDBERGH (St. Andrew), a market-town and parish, in the W. division of the wapentake of Staincliffe and Ewcross, W. riding of York; containing, with the chapelries of Dent, and Garsdale with Grisdale, 4836 inhabitants, of whom 2268 are in the township of Sedbergh, 10 miles (E.) from Kendal, in Westmorland, 77 (W. N. W.) from York, and 260 (N. W. by N.) from London.
The town is neatly built, and consists of one street. Two cotton-mills, the property of James Upton, Esq., of Akay Lodge (a beautiful residence), employ 250 hands, and are propelled by water-power: one of them, called Old Milthorpe, was erected in 1797; the other, Birks Mill, was built in 1802, burnt down in 1825, and rebuilt in 1828. A mill for coarse woollens employs 25 persons. The market is on Wednesday; and fairs for cattle are held on Feb. 26th, March 20th, April 20th, and October 29th.
The parish lies in a mountainous district, on the rivers Rother or Rawthey, Dee, and Clough; and comprises by computation 50,000 acres, whereof more than 30,000 are uninclosed and moorland. In Sedbergh township are 22,521a. 2r. 25p., of which 14,550 acres are common or waste; 750 are arable, 383 woodland, and 32 glebe.
The surface of the parish is boldly varied, and the scenery abounds with features of romantic grandeur, backed by the Howgill fells, rising majestically 2320 feet above the town.
The four hamlets of Marthwaite, Frostrovv and Soolbank, Cautley and Dowbiggin, and Howgill with Bland, are in the township. The Lowgill station on the Lancaster and Carlisle railway is distant five miles north-westward from the town.
The living is a discharged vicarage, valued in the king’s books at £12. 8.; net income, £184, with a house; patrons and impropriators, the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge. The vicarial tithes of the township have been commuted for £129, and the glebe consists of 32 acres.
The church, from its Norman arches and piers, is evidently of ancient date; but seems to have been partially rebuilt, the windows being all of a debased character: a baptismal window of stained glass by Wailes, of Newcastle, was presented in 1844, by a stranger. The font, a beautiful specimen of Garsdale marble, has been restored; and marble steps to the altar have been added by the Rev. G. Platt, the vicar. At Cautley, Dent, Garsdale, and Howgill, are other incumbencies.
There are places of worship for Independents, Methodists, and the Society of Friends.
The free grammar school was originally founded by Roger Lupton, D. D., provost of Eton College in the reign of Henry VII.; and the lands with which it was endowed having been sequestrated by Henry VIII., the school was refounded by Edward VI., who endowed it with the estates belonging to several dissolved chantries.
The management of the property is vested in twelve governors, who reside in the township, and by whom the whole of the rents, about £600 per annum, are paid to the head master, the usher receiving out of them £100 yearly.
The school is free to boys from any parish on the payment of entrance fees and “cockpennies.” The appointment of the master belongs to the Master and Fellows of St. John’s College, Cambridge, where are three fellowships and ten scholarships appropriated to students from this school; there is an exhibition to either of the universities, for natives of the township, and the school sends a candidate for Lady Hastings’ exhibitions. The present head master is the Rev. J. H. Evans, M. A.
About £90 per annum are distributed to poor householders in the township, not receiving parochial relief, at Easter and Christmas; £15 per annum are given to poor children at Whitsuntide, for clothing, and about £8 are expended in bread for the poor. These sums are paid from bequests left in small sums from time to time, and invested in real property.
The remains of a camp are visible round a conical hill called Castle How Tower; and as a curiosity of the neighbourhood may be mentioned Dowker Fell cave, of considerable extent, with a stream of water passing through: the roof, however, is broken in the centre.
Source: A Topographical Dictionary of England by Samuel Lewis 1848
Parish Records
FamilySearch
Use for:
England, Westmoreland, Sedbergh
Administration
- County: Yorkshire
- Civil Registration District: Sedbergh
- Probate Court: Court of the Bishop (Consistory) of the Commissary of the Archdeaconry of Richmond Western Deaneries – Lonsdale
- Diocese: Post-1835 – Ripon, Pre-1836 – York
- Rural Deanery: Clapham
- Poor Law Union: Sedbergh
- Hundred: Staincliff and Ewcross
- Province: York