England
& Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index |
The ParishThe parish of Dewsbury lies in southwestern Yorkshire about 9 miles southwest of the city of Leeds. Dewsbury is a market town and manufacturing centre which sits within the Calder Valley and upon the A638 which follows that valley westwards from Wakefield towards Halifax. Whilst Dewsbury functioned as the market centre for its nearby region, operating a weekly market for goods and livestock, it also grew spectacularly as a mill-town, the Calder's waters powering the looms before the industrial revolution powered growth through steam produced by burning local coal. The surrounding area is part of the fore-hills to the nearby Pennine range and sheep grazing its moorland produced the wool that made Dewsbury a production centre mainly for heavy woollens such as "mungo" and "shoddy" suitable for blankets and carpets. During the period of this transcript Dewsbury grew from a small market town into a major industrial town and the arrival of canals and railways during the 19th century fueled explosive growth. Such is the growth of Dewsbury and its neighbouring towns of Ossett, Batley & Liversedge that the area is almost nowadays a single conurbation with contiguous settlement from the M1 to the east almost through to the M62 to the west. Dewsbury is drained by the Calder which flows eastwards joining with the Aire near Castleford and then the Yorkshire Ouse to flow through the Humber Estuary into the North Sea. Dewsbury is sited at around 40 metres above the sea in the valley by the church but rises to above 150 metres in its northern suburbs. Dewsbury parish was once covering almost the whole of southwestern Yorkshire before being subdivided into smaller parishes, its former 400 square miles making it once the most extensive in England, even reduced to just under 10,000 acres it was still covering a formidable area, within that extensive acreage a population grew steadily from fewer than 4,000 folk to well over 10,000 by the completion of this transcript. In Domesday times much of the Pennine area was relatively underdeveloped and Dewsbury, held by King William, could only offer 6 ploughs as assets. |
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Register No | Covering Dates | Deposited With | Register Style | Quality Standard | Comments |
1 |
27th March 1754 - 5th November 1770 |
West Yorkshire Archive Service - Wakefield - Reference -
WDP9/17 |
Standard preprinted and self-numbered combined Banns &
Marriage register with 4 entries per page |
Grade 3 Register - there are sufficient quality issues
with this register to indicate that some misreads will occur
albeit few in number |
Sporadic fading of this register may lead to one or two
misreads |
2 | 14th November 1770 - 30th June 1796 | West Yorkshire Archive Service - Wakefield - Reference - WDP9/18 | Standard preprinted and self-numbered Marriage register with 3 entries per page | Grade 3 Register - there are sufficient quality issues with this register to indicate that some misreads will occur albeit few in number | Sporadic fading of this register may lead to one or two misreads |
3 | 6th July 1796 - 28th December 1812 | West Yorkshire Archive Service - Wakefield - Reference - WDP9/19 | Standard preprinted and self-numbered Marriage register with 4 entries per page | Grade 4 Register - there are notable quality issues with this register which may have resulted in many misreads | Sporadic fading of this register may lead to one or two misreads,
from late 1809, however, the introduction of a new clerk with
appalling handwriting may result in many misreads, matters do,
however, improve by the end of 1810. |
4 | 4th January 1813 - 8th July 1821 | West Yorkshire Archive Service - Wakefield - Reference - WDP9/20 | Standard Rose style preprinted and prenumbered Marriage register | Grade 2 Register - not a perfect read but with a low likelihood of
misreads |
None |
5 | 13th July 1821- 23rd September 1827 | West Yorkshire Archive Service - Wakefield - Reference - WDP9/21a | Standard Rose style preprinted and prenumbered Marriage register | Grade 3 Register - there are sufficient quality issues with this register to indicate that some misreads will occur albeit few in number | There is noticeable fading in places within this register, when
combined with periods with tiny writing this may result in a few
misreads NB this register is bound together with its successor into a single archival deposit |
6 | 29th September 1827 - 25th September 1831 | West Yorkshire Archive Service - Wakefield - Reference - WDP9/21b | Standard Rose style preprinted and prenumbered Marriage register | Grade 2 Register - not a perfect read but with a low likelihood of
misreads |
None NB this register is bound together with its predecessor into a single archival deposit |
7 | 29th September 1831 - 29th June 1837 | West Yorkshire Archive Service - Wakefield - Reference - WDP9/22 | Nonstandard Rose style preprinted Marriage register, it is nonstandard in not being pre-stamped with its numbering that being left to the clerk to complete | Grade 4 Register - there are notable quality issues with this register which may have resulted in many misreads | This register suffers fairly frequently from poor handwriting a situation that is made more toxic by fading of the register. Some entries are bordering on unreadable and have been guessed at, there will be misreads and possibly quite a few |
Batley
All Saints
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East
Ardsley St Michael
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Thornhill
St Michael
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Thornhill
St Michael
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1755 1760 1765 1770 1775 1780 1785 1790 1795 1800 1805 1810 1815 1820 1825 1830 1835
Corrections to Tinstaafl Transcripts