Sowerby St Mary Yorkshire Family History Guide

Sowerby St Mary is an Ecclesiastical Parish in the county of Yorkshire, created in 1848 from Elland Ecclesiastical Parish.

Parish church:

Parish registers begin:

Parish registers: 1848
Bishop’s Transcripts: 1848

Nonconformists include: Baptist, Independent/Congregational, Methodist New Connexion, and Wesleyan Methodist.

Table of Contents

Adjacent Parishes

Parish History

Comprehensive Gazetteer of England and Wales 1895

Sowerby, a town, a township, and three ecclesiastical parishes in Halifax parish, W.R. Yorkshire. The town stands on an eminence near the river Calder, 1 mile W by S of Sowerby Bridge railway station, and 4 WSW of Halifax. The township contains also Luddenden Foot and Thorpe, the villages of Triangle and Cragg Vale, which have post, money order, and telegraph offices under Halifax and Manchester, and part of the town of Sowerby Bridge, which has a head post office, also part of Mytholmroyd. Acreage, 6818 of land and 76 of water; population, 9348.

The manor belongs to the Countess of Yarborough. Much of the land is moor. Many of the inhabitants are employed in cotton and woollen mills, and foundries. Roman coins were found in 1678.

There are within the township seven churches, Baptist, Congregational, Wesleyan, Primitive and New Connexion Methodist chapels, a town-hall built in 1876, an endowed school, almshouses for six persons, and other charities. Three of the churches, St George, St Mary, and St Peter, are in Sowerby, and the others are at Cragg Vale, Thorpe, Luddenden Foot, and Mytholmroyd, and form separate ecclesiastical parishes.

St George’s was constituted in 1842, population 3178; St Mary’s in 1848, population 1250; and St Peter’s in 1890, population 2850. The livings are vicarages in the diocese of Wakefield; gross values, £190, £224, and £312 respectively, all with residence. Patron of St George and St Peter, the Vicar of Halifax; of St Mary, the Crown and the Bishop alternately. St George’s Church is in the Norman style, with a tower; St Mary’s Church is in the Early Decorated style, with a tower and spire; and St Peter’s Church is in the Grecian style, with a tower, and contains a statue of Archbishop Tillotson, who was a native.

Sowerby Parliamentary Division of W. R. of Yorkshire was formed under the Redistribution of Seats Act, 1885, and returns one member to The House of Commons. Population, 63,202. The division includes the following:-Morley (West, part of)-Barkisland, Erringden, Heptonstall, Langfield, Midgley, Norland, Rishworth, Skircoat (so much as is not included in the municipal borough of Halifax), Sowerby, Soyland, Stansfield, Wadsworth, Warley.

Source: The Comprehensive Gazetteer of England and Wales 1895 by Brabner, John Henry Fryden

Parish Records

FamilySearch

Administration

County: Yorkshire
Civil Registration District: Halifax
Probate Court: Exchequer and Prerogative Courts of the Archbishop of York
Diocese: Post-1835 – Ripon, Pre-1836 – York
Rural Deanery: Pontefract
Poor Law Union: Halifax
Hundred: Morley
Province: York