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England (Counties as in 1851-1901) => England => Cumberland => Topic started by: Cavanaghs on Tuesday 14 January 25 15:30 GMT (UK)
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I've noticed many of my relatives were baptised in St Bees but they seem to marry and get buried in one of the Whitehaven churches. Can anyone help explain why this might be? I'm thinking of the period pre 1837. Tia!
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My knowledge of St Bees is from the 1970's but it was a very small village like place then so going back 140yrs beforehand I presume it had even less facilities hence marriages & baptisms in Whitehaven. About 6 miles between the 2 places so not exactly round the corner
I can't recall if it had a church but a quick Google suggests there wasn't one back in the early 1800's but I may be mistaken
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The parish registers date from 1538 so St Bees has been around for a while! Perhaps it was a much bigger settlement in the past or just catered for a large area around it..
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Whitehaven used to be a chapelry to St Bees.
Back when Whitehaven consisted of just 9 houses!
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Wow! I didn't expect that! I would have thought Whitehaven would have been established as a port since early times!
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Exactly so. Whitehaven was in the parish of St Bees. I have the same situation with many ancestors in my tree - baptised in St Bees.
Martin
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See the OS 6-inch map of 1861: https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=13.0&lat=54.51120&lon=-3.54597&layers=257&b=ESRIWorld&o=100
It shows St. Bees ancient parish as almost 67878 acres - St Bees named in a large hollow font - whereas to the south the township of St Bees was 1848 acres (black italic font). Most of the parish was probably sparsely populated.
Moving north, Whitehaven was a small township of only 176 acres, within a larger parliamentary borough.
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Very interesting background. Two of my family interests are in this area - Creighton and Fox, with attached families.
cheers
Jack Gee
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I'm glad you made me look at this. I have ancestors in Whitehaven c1800. It is largely a Georgian town; years ago I read "Whitehaven 1660-1800", HMSO, 1991. See https://www.jstor.org/stable/4285952
More recently I have spent time looking at the landscape of similar large parishes in Yorkshire on this map series. I now see that two of the churches in Whitehaven are marked "Per Cur" = Perpetual Curacy. That is, they were subsidiary to a mother church, i.e. St. Bees. However St. James is not marked, so I wonder what its status was.
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St James Church - Whitehaven with a photograph and history........
https://www.whitehavenparish.org.uk/about-us/st-james-church/
https://www.whitehavenparish.org.uk/about-us/st-james-church/st-james-history/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_James%27_Church,_Whitehaven
Sandra
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Thank you Sandra. I had glanced at Wikipedia but was runnng out of time this morning to send a reply. The only clue I can see is the sentence "The building known as St James' Chapel was consecrated on the feast of St. James on Wednesday 25th July 1753." so it was originally considered a chapel.