Royton, Lancashire Genealogy

England Lancashire Lancashire Parishes

Guide to Royton, Lancashire ancestry, family history, and genealogy: chapelry register transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Royton, Lancashire
Type	Ecclesiastical Parish
Civil Jurisdictions
Hundred	Salford
County	Lancashire, England Genealogy
Poor Law Union	Oldham
Registration District	Oldham
Records begin
Parish registers: 1755
Bishop's Transcripts: 1758
Ecclesiastical Jurisdictions
Rural Deanery	Rochdale
Diocese	Manchester
Province	York
Legal Jurisdictions
Probate Court	Court of the Bishop of Chester (Episcopal Consistory)
Location of Archive
Lancashire Archives

Chapelry History

ROYTON, a chapelry, in the parochial chapelry, parliamentary borough, and union of Oldham St Mary, Lancashire Genealogy, parish of Prestwich St Mary, Lancashire Genealogy, hundred of Salford, S. division of Lancashire, 2 miles north by west of Oldham, on the road to Rochdale. There are places of worship for Independents, Wesleyans, and the Society of Friends.

Resources

Civil Registration

Birth, marriages and deaths were kept by the government, from July 1837 to the present day. The civil registration article tells more about these records. There are several Internet sites with name lists or indexes. A popular site is FreeBMD.

Online index of Lancashire Births, Marriages and Deaths Lancashire BMD

Churches and chapels in Royton

Royton had no medieval church of its own, and for ecclesiastical purposes, lay within the parish of Prestwich-cum-Oldham in the Diocese of Lichfield, until 1541, when this diocese was divided and Royton became part of the Diocese of Chester. This in turn was divided in 1847, when the present Diocese of Manchester was created. For ritual baptisms, marriages and burials, the people of Royton, a Christian community, had to travel to churches that lay outside of the township's boundaries, including  Oldham St Mary, Lancashire Genealogy, St Leonard's Middleton, Lancashire Genealogy or  Prestwich St Mary, Lancashire Genealogy.

The Religious Society of Friends were recorded as holding conventicles in Heyside in as early as the 1650s. A Baptist meeting place was erected in 1775. Congregational preachers regularly visited Royton, but it was not until 1854 that a workshop was established in the town. Primitive Methodism was established in Royton in a room in a Royley building, with its first purpose-built church being erected in 1867.

Roman Catholicism in Royton after the English Reformation began in 1874, when a disused factory was used as a chapel. Sir Percival Radcliffe, the then owner of Royton Hall, gave land and £2,000 towards the construction of a new Catholic school-chapel which opened in 1880; the local priest lived at Royton Hall. A rectory was built in 1901 and in 1966 the church, dedicated to saints Aidan and Oswald, was rebuilt. Royton, which forms part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Salford, continues to have a Catholic community, supported by Our Lady's R.C. High School.

The Lancashire Online Parish Clerk website contains a listing of all denominations in the Oldham area (see below).

Church records

Online Records

• 1538 - 1910 England, Lancashire, Parish Registers 1538-1910 at FamilySearch — index
• 1603 - 1910 England, Lancashire, Cheshire, Yorkshire, Parish Registers, 1603-1910 at FamilySearch — index and images

Church of England

Royton chapelry's registers of christenings, marriages and burials, along with those of the ancient parish of Prestwich to which it is attached, have been mostly transcribed and are displayed online at the following websites and ranges of years:

AC = Ancestry.co.uk (£)

FMP = findmypast (£)

FREG = FreeReg

FS = FamilySearch.org

LBMD = LancashireBMD.org.uk

LOPC = Lancashire Online Parish Clerk

ROYTON ST PAUL Chapelry (1755) Indexes
	Baptisms	Marriages	Burials
FS	1755-1910	None	1758-1868
LOPC	1755-1797, 1806-1919	1839-1909	1757-1785, 1806-1938
LBMD	1837-1928	1839-1974	1838-1872
FMP	None	None	1757-1938
PRESTWICH ST MARY PARISH (1600) Indexes (ancient parish containing ROYTON Chapelry)
	Baptisms	Marriages	Burials
FS	1603-1910	1600-1935	1712-1921
LOPC	1603-1936	1603-1895	1603-1921
LBMD	1837-1902	1837-1925	1837-1877
FMP	None	1603-1712	None
AC	1603-1711	1603-1711	1603-1711

For a full list of all those chapels surrounding Royton and comprising the whole ancient parish of Prestwich to which it was attached, be certain to see "Church Records" on the PRESTWICH ST MARY PARISH page.

Parish registers, 1755-1938 Microfilm of original records housed at the Central Library, Oldham.

The Chapelry of Royton is in the parish of Prestwich.

Content	Film
Baptisms and burials, 1755-1813 Baptisms, 1813-1850	FHL BRITISH Film 1656585
Baptisms, 1850-1919 Burials, 1813-1836	FHL BRITISH Film 1656586
Burials, 1836-1938 Marriages, 1839-1889	FHL BRITISH Film 1656587
Marriages, 1888-1909	FHL BRITISH Film 1656588

Bishop's transcripts for Royton, 1758-1880 Microreproduction of original manuscripts housed at the Lancashire Record Office, Preston.The Chapelry of Royton (St. Paul's) is in the parish of Prestwich. It was formerly in the parish of Oldham.
Lancashire Record Office: DRM/2/253-258

Content	Film
Baptisms and burials, 1758-1836	FHL BRITISH Film 1545720 Items 2-4
Baptisms and burials, 1836-1846; 1858-1869; marriages, 1843	FHL BRITISH Film 1545721
Baptisms and burials, 1870-1880	FHL BRITISH Film 1545722 Item 1

Non Conformist Records

• 1647-1996 England, Lancashire Non-conformist Church Records, 1647-1996 at FamilySearch - How to Use this Collection; index (dates may vary by parish)

Lancashire Online Parish Clerk

A valuable resource is the online information provided by the Online Parish Clerk at With links to Baptisms, marriages and burials for the parish with surname index.

Census records

Census records from 1841 to 1911 are available online. For access, see England Census. Census records from 1841 to 1891 are also available on film through a Family History Center or at the Family History Library.

Poor Law unions

Oldham Poor Law Union

Probate records

Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Lancashire Probate Records to find the name of the court having primary jurisdiction. Scroll down in the article to the section Court Jurisdictions by Parish.

Taxation

• 1541 - 1541 Subsidy of Ryton (p. 145)
• 1622 - 1622 Subsidy of Ryton (p. 158)

Maps and Gazetteers

Maps are a visual look at the locations in England. Gazetteers contain brief summaries about a place.

• England Jurisdictions 1851
• Vision of Britain

Websites

For information about the parish

For information about Oldham West Denery of the Diocese of Manchester

British History online

Royton History Society web page

GENUKI page

Family History Library