projects
Latest update: 24th January
Boatmen & Their Families – NEW
This project has now been completed and a CD is available, price £10 plus p&p of £1. There is a 10% discount on this price for members of the Society.
The content of the CD includes:
- Baptisms at Ormskirk Parish Church of boatmen’s children 1813 – 1817
- Information from various census relating to Burscough & Lathom i.e. 1841, 1851, 1881 & 1901
- Boatmen who purchased graves at Burscough St John CE Church, 1900 – 1920
- Photographs of the canal
- Boatman’s strike 1913 (information taken from Ormskirk Advertiser)
For details of how to order this CD please go to our Sales page.
Burscough St John C of E Church
This large project, started a couple of years ago by the Society, has been undertaken in two stages. The Church very kindly gave us access to their Grave Ownership Book and Burial Register, which were digitally photographed and put onto a CD, together with a searchable transcript of the Grave Ownership Book. The Burial Register and Grave Ownership Book both go back to 1834. This CD is now available at a cost of £10, and was recently reviewed in Family History Monthly (Jan 08) when we were commended for our use of digital images.
The second and largest part of the project is to photograph all of the gravestones and inscriptions, both inside and outside the Church, using digital photography. There are over 4,000 graves surrounding the Church, dating back to approx 1834, when the Church was built, so this has been a huge undertaking. Once photographed, the inscriptions have all been transcribed by our volunteers. Once transcribed, the inscriptions all have to be checked for accuracy against the actual headstones. In some cases, this has involved uncovering flat gravestones which had become overgrown and so unreadable. Because of this, progress can be slow.
We are now in the final stages of checking and amending the transcriptions, and hope to have the work finished in the next couple of months, but at the moment we are being hampered by the weather. All of the transcription will then be put onto a CD, which will be fully searchable. Unfortunately we won’t be able to include the photographs due to the amount of space they take, but, if you want a copy of the photo of the grave of one of your ancestors, we are hoping to be able to provide these at a small charge, to cover our expenses.
We must thank everyone at St John’s for allowing us access to the records and graveyard, and for their help and patience.
NB: The church have recently found further records relating to the Grave Ownership Book, to which we have been given access. This mainly relates to burials in Section M of the graveyard, which will be transcribed over the coming months. We also have some details of godparent registers from the 20C, which again will be transcribed. So watch out for even more CD’s for this Church.
Scarisbrick St Elizabeth Catholic Church
A further CD from St Elizabeth’s is planned, to complement the Monument Inscriptions CD (which contains photos of all gravestones) and the Interior photographs and Mass Card CD. The new CD will contain all the Birth, Marriages and Death records from the Church, plus those of St Mary’s Church which originally stood on the site. We are currently in the process of checking our transcript of these records, and as soon as this is completed the CD will be available.
Once again, the Church has been very helpful in allowing us access to their records, the interior of the Church and the graveyard.
Hesketh with Becconsall Church
This is a further project to transcribe inscriptions from gravestones before they disappear. All of the gravestones have been photographed and about half have been transcribed so far. One of the problems with this graveyard is that there is no plan available of the graves. We therefore need to draw our own plan to enable graves to be identified. Once this is done we can transcribe the rest of the inscriptions, but at the minute this is a work in progress.
Maghull St Andrew’s Church
Much of the old graveyard at Maghull St. Andrew’s has now been transcribed and is awaiting checking. We will be appealing for checkers at the next meeting. Only the section alongside the church still needs to be transcribed.
Proposals for future Projects
Transcribing Monumental Inscriptions at Halsall St Cuthbert’s Church
Ormskirk St Peter & St Paul, we are hoping to be able to pinpoint the original position of flat gravestones which have been moved from immediately around the Church, but this will take a long time to come to fruition.