General Notes
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
- Marriages at St Oswald’s before 18 June 1988. (The Marriage Register for 18 June 1988 to 3 June 2016 at St. Oswald’s is currently held by the parish, but will at some stage be transferred to Chester)
- All burials up to 27 August 2004
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. Transcriptions of other volumes of the registers may be added later.
Witnesses to marriage are often family members; finding their names may open new lines of research.
Burials and Memorial Inscriptions
A complete transcription of the burial registers for the parish 1835-2019 exists on our 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!