Place:St. Luke Old Street, Middlesex, England

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NameSt. Luke Old Street
Alt namesSt Luke's Middlesexsource: name for the civil parish
Middlesex St. Lukesource: Finsbury section of the original parish
St Luke Old Streetsource: Vision of Britain
St Lukesource: shortened form
St. Lukesource: shortened form
TypeFormer parish
Coordinates51.5253°N 0.0939°W
Located inMiddlesex, England     (1733 - 1889)
See alsoOssulstone Hundred, Middlesex, Englandancient subdivision covering the area until 1894
St. Giles Without Cripplegate, London (City of), London, Englandancient parish of which it was a part until 1733
Finsbury (metropolitan borough), London, Englandmetropolitan borough covering the area 1900-1965
Islington (London Borough), Greater London, EnglandLondon borough covering the area since 1965
source: Family History Library Catalog
There were churches dedicated to St. Luke and ecclesiastical parishes surrounding them in Westminster and Chelsea as well as this one north of the City of London.


St. Luke Old Street was an ecclesiastical parish from 1733 until 1959 and a civil parish from 1855 until 1889.

In the 21st century St. Luke's is a neighbourhood of the London Borough of Islington in central London. It lies just north of the border with the City of London near the Barbican Estate, Clerkenwell, Farringdon and Shoreditch areas. The area takes its name from the now defunct church of St Luke's, on Old Street which was situated just west of the tube (or underground) station named after the street.

The area of the old parish extended north of the church to City Road and south to Finsbury Square and Whitecross Street. The ecclesiastical parish of St. Luke was reabsorbed into the parish of St. Giles Without Cripplegate in the City of London following the closure of St. Luke's Church in 1959.

History

The civil and ecclesiastical parish of St Luke's was created on the construction of the church in 1733, from the part of the existing parish of St Giles Cripplegate that was located outside the City of London.

Being outside the City boundaries, the parish had a large non-conformist population. The house of John Wesley (1703-1791) and the Wesleyan Chapel are in City Road, as is Bunhill Fields burial ground.

In 1751, the asylum, St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics, was founded and existed until 1917.

The civil parish became officially known as St Luke's Middlesex. The parish was historically in the county of Middlesex, and was included in the area of the Metropolitan Board of Works in 1855. Under the Metropolis Management Act 1855 any parish that exceeded 2,000 ratepayers was to be divided into wards, each of which elected one or more "vestrymen" who, today, would be described as local councillors. In 1855 St. Luke's had a population of about 55,000 in an area of 220 acres.

In 1889 it became part of the County of London, but the vestry continued to administer local government in the area until the civil parish became part of the Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury ten years later. In 1965, the borough was amalgamated with the Metropolitan Borough of Islington to form the London Borough of Islington in Greater London.

Image:Finsbury area reduced twice.png

The parish church closed in 1959 after its structure was found to be unsafe. The parish reunited with St Giles Cripplegate. The church building has been restored and is now home to a concert hall and rehearsal space used by the London Symphony Orchestra. A total of 1053 burials were recorded and removed during the restoration of the crypt. A documentary "Changing Tombs" covering the removal of the burials was produced at the time and can be found on YouTube.[citation needed]

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article St. Luke Old Street. This article explains the course of history for the church edifice of St. Luke Old Street.

Image:Finsbury 1868 cropped.png

Research tips

Greater London Research Tips

A reminder that Greater London was not formed until 1965 and covers a much greater territory than its predecessor, the County of London formed in 1900. The City of London was only a part of the County of London. A map of the boroughs of Greater London is reproduced on all Greater London borough pages. A map of the boroughs of the smaller County of London is reproduced on all County of London borough pages.


Researching ancestors in London will probably be more successful than researching ancestors in the rest of England, particularly for the period before 1837 and the advent of civil registration. Baptisms, marriages and burials are available online for County of London parishes, and possibly for parishes throughout Greater London as well.

  • Anglican Parishes in London is a wiki here on WeRelate listing the places of worship of the established church throughout London. The churches are grouped within the post-1965 boroughs and for each is the street address, a link to the Booth Map (inner boroughs only), the time span for which the database AIM25 holds records, the FamilySearch Wiki link (see below), the Wikipedia link, and further notes. This is a work-in-progress and not all churches are listed as yet, but it is a guide to a great deal more information on those for which information has been gathered.
  • The London Metropolitan Archives (40 Northampton Road, Clerkenwell, London EC1R 0HB) holds records relating to the whole of Greater London. Ancestry (subscription necessary) has produced transcriptions and provides images of lists of baptisms, marriages, and burials in churches across Greater London. Many of these lists start in 1813 and stretch into the 20th century; some start even earlier.

Maps

  • A street-by-street map of London (both sides of the Thames, and stretching from Limehouse, Stepney and Greenwich in the east to Hyde Park and Kensington in the west) drawn by Edward Mogg in 1806. Blows up to a very readable level. Highly recommended viewing. Shows named areas on the edge of the County of London (1900-1965) as the small villages they were in 1800. Streets in the City are named, but churches are missing.
  • The Phillimore Atlas and Index of Parish Registers edited by Cecil Humphery-Smith and published by Phillimore & Co Ltd (edition of 1995) provides a map of the City of London indicating all the parishes and includes dates of commencement of registers for parishes formed before 1832.
  • Wikipedia has an expandable map of the area of devastation of the 1666 fire. The map includes the location of Pudding Lane where the fire started.
  • A map of London in the 1890s provided by the National Library of Scotland. There are a few steps between the home page index and the individual maps which may be difficult to follow for those who don't know London, but the maps themselves are produced at the scale of 5 feet to the mile on the original and are very clear. Houses on streets are marked, but not numbered.
  • Ordnance Survey map of London 1900 (provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time) showing London parishes just after the reorganization of 1899. The map was originally drawn over a street map at a scale of 1 inch to the mile and can be blown up to inspect a single borough. Only the major streets are marked and are only visible at maximum magnification. The City of London is an inset in the top right hand corner.
  • Ordnance Survey map of Middlesex 1900 (provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time) showing the parishes remaining in Middlesex after the reorganization of 1899 when much of the former area of Middlesex had been transferred into London.
  • Ordnance Survey map of Surrey 1900 (provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time) showing Surrey parishes (chiefly Southwark) just after the reorganization of 1899 when the most urban parts of Surrey were transferred into London.
  • Ordnance Survey map of Kent 1900 (provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time) showing Kent parishes just after the reorganization of 1899 when the western part of Kent had been transferred into London.
  • Ordnance Survey map of Essex 1900 (provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time) showing Essex parishes (West Ham, East Ham, Ilford) which were absorbed into Greater London in 1965.

Registration Districts

  • Registration Districts in London, Registration Districts in Middlesex, Registration Districts in Surrey, Registration Districts in Kent, and Registration Districts in Essex are lists of the registration districts used for civil registration (births, marriages and deaths, as well as the censuses). There are linked supporting lists of the parishes which made up each registration district, the dates of formation and abolition of the districts, the General Register Office numbers, and the local archive-holding place. This work has been carried out by Brett Langston under the agency of GENUKI (Genealogy United Kingdom and Ireland) and UKBMD - Births, Marriages, Deaths & Censuses on the Internet, and has been updated into the 21st century. If the only information about an individual has been obtained from UKBMD, the name of the registration district is considered a "placename" within WeRelate and can be used to provide a broad estimate of the location.

Cemeteries

  • Deceased Online includes four of the "Magnificent Seven" cemeteries (Brompton, Highgate, Kensal Green, and Nunhead) in its inventory of 65 London cemeteries. Transcripts for Abney Park are free with registration online at www.devsys.co.uk/ap/. Ancestry (international subscription necessary) has "London, England, City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetery Registers, 1841-1966". That leaves West Norwood without comprehensive online access to burial records. (Deceased Online and Ancestry may have increased their provision since this was written in 2016.)
  • As of October 2019 Ancestry has a file titled "England & Scotland, Select Cemetery Registers 1800-2016" which includes Abney Park Cemetery, Greenford Park Cemetery, Acton Cemetery, Ealing & Old Brentford Cemetery, Havelock Norwood Cemetery, Hortus Cemetery, South Ealing Cemetery, Queens Road Cemetery, and Chingford Mount Cemetery.
  • The City of London Cemetery, at Manor Park, near Wanstead in the London Borough of Redbridge also contains remains transferred from former parishes in the City of London whose graveyards have been replaced by streets and commercial buildings.
  • Brookwood Cemetery, beyond the Greater London borders in Surrey, was opened in 1854 for burials for Londoners. See the Wikpedia article.

Other online sources

  • See the FamilySearch Wiki under "London" and also under "Middlesex", "Surrey", "Essex" and "Kent" for key information about Greater London's jurisdictions and records, plus links to indexes, reference aids and Family History Library holdings.
  • GENUKI has a long list of websites and archive holders in addition to London Metropolitan Archives above. (The list from GENUKI is not maintained so well that there is never a dead link in it. However, it is often worth googling the title given on the page just in case the contributor has reorganized their website and GENUKI has not picked it up.)
  • GENUKI also has a list of the Archives and Local Studies Libraries for each of the boroughs of Greater London.
  • The London Encyclopaedia by Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert. An e-book available online through Google, originally published by Pan Macmillan. There is a search box in the left-hand pane.
  • London Lives. A very useful free website for anyone researching their London ancestors between the years 1690-1800. This is a fully searchable edition of 240,000 manuscripts from eight archives and fifteen datasets, giving access to 3.35 million names.
  • London Ancestor, a website belonging to one of the London family history societies, has a list of transcriptions of directories from the 18th century, listing in one case "all the squares, streets, lanes, courts, yards, alleys, &C. in and about Five Miles of the Metropolis..." In other parts of the same website are maps of various parts of 19th century London and Middlesex.
  • The proceedings of the Old Bailey, London's central criminal court, 1674-1913. A fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court. This website is free to use.
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at St Luke's, London. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.