Place:Sefton, Lancashire, England

Sefton (S5 on the map) is now a village and civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton in Merseyside, England. Located to the southwest of Maghull and to the northeast of Great Crosby, it is on the flood plain of the River Alt. The village is bisected by the B5422 road, which cuts also through the site of the moat of Sefton Old Hall. At the UK census of 2011 the population was recorded as 855. Historically a part of Lancashire, the name Sefton is thought to be derived from the Old Norse sef, meaning "sedge" or "rushes" and tún meaning "farmstead". In the past Sephton was an alternative spelling. The Parish Church of St Helen (Church of England) - the only Grade I listed building in the borough - was first built around 1170 as the private chapel of the Molyneux family. Some other structures in the village are listed as Grade II. The site of Sefton Mill dates back to the Middle Ages. Local folklore has it that Sefton Hall, a loyalist stronghold, was the scene of a skirmish in the English Civil War. The Georgian Rectory to nearby Sefton Parish Church was demolished in the 1970s, however the gate piers still stand at the entrance to Glebe End. The curate's house, Lunt House, was situated in the nearby hamlet of Lunt which was once a separate parish. end of Wikpedia contribution Sefton was an ancient parish in the West Derby Hundred. As an ancient parish it provided ecclesiastical functions for townships surrounding it. These were Sefton itself, Netherton, Lunt, Thornton (Sefton), Ince Blundell, Great Crosby, Little Crosby, Litherland, Orrell and Ford, and Aintree. Most of these townships became civil parishes in 1866 and were from then on responsible for some of their local functions. From 1894 until 1932 Sefton was part of the Sefton Rural District in Lancashire and was transferred to West Lancashire Rural District when Sefton Rural District was abolished in that year.

Research Tips

• See the Wikipedia articles on parishes and civil parishes for descriptions of this lowest rung of local administration. The original parishes (known as ancient parishes) were ecclesiastical, under the jurisdiction of the local priest. A parish covered a specific geographical area and was sometimes equivalent to that of a manor. Sometimes, in the case of very large rural parishes, there were chapelries where a "chapel of ease" allowed parishioners to worship closer to their homes. In the 19th century the term civil parish was adopted to define parishes with a secular form of local government. In WeRelate both civil and ecclesiastical parishes are included in the type of place called a "parish". Smaller places within parishes, such as chapelries and hamlets, have been redirected into the parish in which they are located. The names of these smaller places are italicized within the text.
• Rural districts were groups of geographically close civil parishes in existence between 1894 and 1974. They were formed as a middle layer of administration between the county and the civil parish. Inspecting the archives of a rural district will not be of much help to the genealogist or family historian, unless there is need to study land records in depth.
• Civil registration or vital statistics and census records will be found within registration districts. To ascertain the registration district to which a parish belongs, see Registration Districts in Lancashire, part of the UK_BMD website.
• Lancashire Online Parish Clerks provide free online information from the various parishes, along with other data of value to family and local historians conducting research in the County of Lancashire.
• FamilySearch Lancashire Research Wiki provides a good overview of the county and also articles on most of the individual parishes (very small or short-lived ones may have been missed).
• Ancestry (international subscription necessary) has a number of county-wide collections of Church of England baptisms, marriages and burials, some from the 1500s, and some providing microfilm copies of the manuscript entries. There are specific collections for Liverpool (including Catholic baptisms and marriages) and for Manchester. Their databases now include electoral registers 1832-1935. Another pay site is FindMyPast.
• A map of Lancashire circa 1888 supplied by A Vision of Britain through Time includes the boundaries between the parishes and shows the hamlets within them.
• A map of Lancashire circa 1954 supplied by A Vision of Britain through Time is a similar map for a later timeframe.
• GENUKI provides a website covering many sources of genealogical information for Lancashire. The organization is gradually updating the website and the volunteer organizers may not have yet picked up all the changes that have come with improving technology.
• The Victoria County History for Lancashire, provided by British History Online, covers the whole of the county in six volumes (the seventh available volume [numbered Vol 2] covers religious institutions). The county is separated into its original hundreds and the volumes were first published between 1907 and 1914. Most parishes within each hundred are covered in detail. Maps within the text can contain historical information not available elsewhere.
• A description of the parish of Sefton from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1907
• A description of the township of Sefton from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1907