Todmorden Yorkshire Family History Guide

| |
Updated on
Links marked with a * mean that we may earn a small commission if you make a purchase, at no additional cost to you. It all helps to keep the site online and free for everyone.

Todmorden is an Ecclesiastical Parish partly in Lancashire and partly in Yorkshire; Created in 1832 from a chapelry in Rochdale Ancient Parish.

Alternative names: Todmorden and Walsden, Todmorden with Walsden

Parish registers begin:

  • Parish registers: 1666
  • Bishop’s Transcripts: 1625

Nonconformists include: Baptist, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Independent/Congregational, Methodist New Connexion, Primitive Methodist, Society of Friends/Quaker, Swedenborgian/New Jerusalem/New Church, Unitarian, and Wesleyan Methodist.

Adjacent Parishes

Todmorden Parish Registers

Todmorden Parish Registers 1781 to 1812

The Registers of Todmorden 1781 to 1812. Published by The Lancashire Parish Register Society. Transcribed and Edited by Douglas Wilson M.A. (Oxon) and Keith Fielden E.Eng., M.I.Chem.E. based on a transcription by Henry Brierley. Printed and published by permission of The Reverend Canon Peter N. Calvert. – This book is a free download from Parishmouse

Todmorden Parish Records

School Records

The National School Admission Registers & Log-Books 1870–1914 collection offers a rare glimpse into the educational journeys of children across England and Wales during a transformative era. These records often capture names, dates of birth, parental occupations, and school attendance patterns – making them invaluable for family historians, local researchers, and anyone tracing Victorian or Edwardian ancestry. You can view them free with a Findmypast Trial.

All Saints School 1871-1917 Log

Parish History

Comprehensive Gazetteer of England and Wales 1895

Todmorden, a market and union town, a township, and an ecclesiastical parish in Lancashire, and in the W.R. Yorkshire. The town stands on the river Calder, the Rochdale Canal, and the L. & Y.R., 8½ miles NNE of Rochdale, and 12 from Halifax. It enjoys fine environs surrounded by lofty mountains, presents an irregularly-built and straggling appearance, is a seat of petty sessions and county courts, publishes two weekly newspapers, and carries on extensive manufactures of cotton, fustians, ironwork, and machinery.

It has a head post office, a railway station, several banks, a town-hall, Liberal and Conservative clubs, a county police station, an Oddfellows’ hall, a statue of the late John Fielden, unveiled in 1875, a handsome church of 1831, an old church now used as a chapel of ease, a Unitarian chapel erected in 1869 at a cost of about £40,000, Baptist, Congregational, Primitive and United Methodist, Wesleyan, and Roman Catholic chapels, a church institute, and two hospitals.

Weekly markets are held on Wednesday and Saturday, a cattle market on the first Thursday of every month, and there are two annual fairs, each of three days’ continuance. The town-hall is a stone building, erected in 1875 at a cost to the Fielden family of nearly £50,000, and contains a large hall capable of holding 1000 persons.

The urban district includes Todmorden and Walsden and Cornholme in the parish of Rochdale and Stansfield and Langfield in the parish of Halifax. Acreage, 15,690; population, 24,725. Dobroyd Castle, Todmorden Hall, Stansfield Hall, and Centre Vale are chief residences.

The ecclesiastical parishes are Todmorden and Walsden in the diocese of Manchester, and St Paul’s, Cross Stone, and All Saints, Harley Wood, in the diocese of Wakefield. Todmorden church is in the Early English style, and consists of chancel, nave, aisles, and an embattled western tower. A new chancel with vestries was erected in 1885.

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

Administration

  • County: Yorkshire
  • Civil Registration District: Todmorden
  • Probate Court: Exchequer and Prerogative Courts of the Archbishop of York
  • Diocese: Manchester
  • Rural Deanery: Rochdale
  • Poor Law Union: Todmorden
  • Hundred: Morley
  • Province: York