Researching your Family History

The following Parish Registers of baptisms, marriages and burials at St John's and St Oswald's, Bollington and Holy Trinity, Kerridge are kept at the Chester Record Office.

• All baptisms at St John's and Holy Trinity Kerridge
• Baptisms at St Oswald's up to 23 September 2001
• All marriages at St John's and St Oswald's.
• All burials up to 27 August 2004

Correct at the time of writing.

If you need a certified copy of a register entry from any of the registers held at Chester, it can only be obtained from the Chester Record Office.

If you need a certified copy of a more recent register entry, contact the parish.

Transcriptions of most parish registers can be searched online on this website.

Baptisms

Transcriptions of all baptisms at St John's, St Oswald's and Holy Trinity Kerridge 1834-2006 are now available online, a total of nearly 7,600 records.

You can enter a name to search for and the search will provide details of baptisms where the name is of the person baptised or one of their parents.

Marriages

The first volumes of the marriage registers have been transcribed and can be searched here. They cover all marriages at St John's and St Oswald's from 1838 to 1953. There are also a number of marriages from 1954 to 1959 but this period is incomplete as we have only transcribed complete volumes. There are nearly 1,500 records in this part of the database. There are no plans to provide transcriptions of other volumes of the registers.

You can enter a name to search for and the search will provide details of marriages where the selected name appears as that of bride or groom, of his or her father, or of one of the witnesses to the marriage.

Witnesses to marriage are often family members; finding their names may open new lines of research.

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Burials and Memorial Inscriptions

A complete transcription of the burial registers for the parish 1835-2020 exists on this database, along with a transcription of all* the memorial inscriptions. There are over 8,000 burial records and over 1,400 memorial inscriptions (including those in the Columbarium).
(*some memorials are no longer legible).

It is possible to search our database for details of burials and memorials. It is important to note the following:

• Until recent decades, the burial registers did not systematically identify the location of individual burials within the churchyard.
• Only about half of the 2000 or so graves have memorials with inscriptions.

So although the burial register can confirm whether an individual's remains were interred in the churchyard, our records may not identify the location of a grave.

Nevertheless, the information from the burial registers and memorials can be very valuable in tracing relatives and ancestors.

You are advised to read the Guidance Notes about interpreting the results of searching the Burial Registers and Memorial Inscriptions. "Face Value" can be misleading!

The former St John's Church

Online War Memorial

This was originally created as part of the commemoration of the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. It has been further developed since and includes many contributions of information and photographs from family members, for which we are very grateful.

The Memorial includes details of Bollington families whose sons served their country in WW1.

A section gives details of men with a local connection who gave their lives in WW1 or WW2.

There are other items of local interest - Rolls of Honour, physical War Memorials - as well as information about some of the regiments that many local men joined in WW1.

If your ancestors served in WW1, you may find something about them here. If you have any additional material that you would like to add to this memorial, please contact the Webmaster.

If you're interested in other military history, you might be interested to search our burials database for:

• James Robertshaw (died 1859) Grenadier, Waterloo veteran
• James Shaw (died 1913) 64th Foot, Indian mutiny veteran