England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Prescot St Mary

The Parish

The parish of Prescot lies in southwestern Lancashire forming a stretch of the border with neighbouring Cheshire. The parish is an extensive one, covering a vast acreage and divided into chapelries and townships, four chapelries were licensed for marriages (Rainford, Farnworth, St Helens & Great Sankey) and they will in due course have their own pages within this project. In addition to the chapelries there were significant townships such as Cronton, Eccleston, Parr, Rainhill & Widnes each with substantial populations. Prescot, itself, was a mid-sized market town which is located 8 miles east of the port of Liverpool and sits on the fork of the A58 (Liverpool to Bolton) and A57 (Liverpool to Runcorn) roads. The economy of the parish was as diverse as its acreage was large but two main industries are notable, underpinning much of the parish lie coal measures and collieries were numerous and employed many, a similar number were employed in the contrasting trade of watch-making one heavy and labourious, the other light and needing finer skills. Much of the coal found its way to Liverpool by the parish's southern boundary, the Mersey Estuary where the port of Widnes was instrumental. Agriculture was a mixture of pastoral and market gardening supporting the burgeoning population of nearby Liverpool. Today the mining and watch-making have gone but Prescot parish still has a broad industrial infrastructure with the chemical industries on the Mersey banks notable whilst more light industry now employs most folk. Modern developments have come apace to the parish, the first passenger railway line from Liverpool to Manchester passes through and other lines abound serving passenger and freight alike. In more recent time the M57 & M62 motorways have carved through whilst the A580 (East Lancs Road) has been almost made to motorway standards. Prescot is no longer just a mid-sized market town but part of a vast conurbation that shows every sign of eventually joining Liverpool with Manchester. Drainage heads south to the Mersey through natural and man-influenced watercourses to then pass westward into the Irish Sea. Prescot town sits at around 80 metres above the sea, a lofty height above the "mosses" that characterise this area and made railway construction so problematic, it is roughly the highest ground for some distance. The parish of Prescot was immense, covering some 36,000 acres whilst supporting a population of almost 36,000 parishioners. The volume of marriages recorded at the parish church, however, reflects just the population of the market town, some 5,500 in total. Prescot is not specifically mentioned in Domesday Book.

The Church

St Mary's church sits at the heart of the old market town, just west of the important junction of A58 & A57, both now taken away from the town centre, and west of the old market place and today's shopping area. Pevsner points out the circular nature of the site, indicative of a pre-Conquest Christian site but of course nothing of that period survives. Such has been the changes made that even the medieval is restricted to fragments of masonry reused in the chancel and vestry. The main body of the church is from the 1610 build, the nave and its arcades being of this date, the nave roof is a splendid construction of the period. Next in date order is the steeple of 1729, albeit repaired in recent times after a lightning strike. The aisles are Georgian and completed in 1819 whilst the vestry is later still from 1900. Like most market town churches there is little parking immediately close by so a local car park is best sought. The church sits within a typical urban setting flush, with the pavements on some sides on others a low sandstone wall, which is fortunately open enough to allow most angles for the photographer.