Anglican ecclesiastical records

A guide to the archives of the Church of England in Derbyshire (edited 18 Oct 2022).

In 1969, Derbyshire Record Office was legally designated by the Bishop of Derby as the Derby Diocesan Record Office and parish records are also deposited under the Parochial Registers and Records Measure 1978.  The office is also approved by the Master of the Rolls for the deposit of tithe records.

The Diocese of Derby was created in 1927.  Prior to this, the whole county was an archdeaconry in the Diocese of Lichfield to 1884 and then in the Diocese of Southwell.

Diocese of Derby

Most the of diocesan records held at Derbyshire Record Office date from the creation of the diocese in 1927, although some series (including glebe terriers and tithe records, ref: D2360) were transferred from the diocesan registers of Lichfield and Southwell.  The records of these dioceses are held at Staffordshire Record Office and Nottinghamshire Archives respectively.

Broadly speaking the diocesan records here at Derbyshire Record Office fall into five categories:

• Administration including induction papers, reports and files
• Finance including minutes, accounts and reports
• Churches and property including minutes, deeds, architect’s files and drawings, glebe terriers and tithe records
• Education including minutes, reports and accounts
• Social responsibility including minutes, accounts, reports and case books.

Some early boards created on an archdiaconal basis continued as diocesan organisations and these records are also held.  A list of all the archive collections for the Diocese of Derby can be seen here via our online catalogue.

Parishes

The basic unit of the Anglican hierarchy is the parish, sometimes with missions or chapels and sometimes united with other benefices or operating as part of a team ministry.  Changing patterns of population led to the creation of many new parishes in urban areas, particularly in the 19th and 20th centuries, some of which have now been amalgamated.  County boundary changes have sometimes been reflected in the transfer of parishes to different dioceses.  

A full list of parish archive collections can be seen here, or search the online catalogue using the place name and word parish in the Title field, and select Fonds as the Level:

Parish records may include:

• Registers of baptisms, marriages, banns and burials (some as early as 1538), and occasionally services from the late 19th century – registers of baptisms (to 1916), marriages (to 1932) and burials (to 1991) are available to search online via Ancestry.com.
• Faculties and other documents relating to the income of the church and to the church building
• tithe maps and schedules
• records of church schools and charities
• accounts (and occasionally other records) of parish officials – churchwardens, constables/headboroughs, *surveyors of the highways and *overseers of the poor including settlement papers, removal orders, bastardy papers, pauper apprenticeship indentures, some as early the 17th century
• minutes and other records of the *vestry and later the Parochial Church Council.

*Until 1894, the parish was also a civil administrative unit. With the creation of new civil authorities in 1894, some pre-1894 records were transferred to the new bodies, and may therefore be found amongst the archives of Parish, Urban District or Rural District Council (search the catalogue by Organisation Type for more information).

The commencement date of surviving registers and a brief history indicating when each of the non-ancient parishes was created and from which other parish/es can be found in our Parish Register Guide.

Rural Deaneries

When the Diocese of Derby was created in 1927, new archdeaconries of Derby and Chesterfield were established.  Within the archdeaconry, parishes were, and are, organised into rural deaneries.  Clergy within the deanery meet regularly in chapter or conference – no deanery chapter or conference minutes survive before the 1840s. 

A list of the archive collections for rural deaneries can be seen here via our online catalogue.

Presbyterian National Church

Episcopacy (rule of the church by bishops) was abolished in 1646 during the civil war and a Presbyterian national church came into being.  Fully developed, a Presbyterian church would have consisted of four levels of organisation: the congregation or parish presbytery; the clerical assembly (or classis) formed of delegates from the parochial presbyteries within a specific area; the provincial synod; the national assembly.

This system was never fully implemented in England but, in the 1650s, groups of ministers came together to establish “classical” assemblies such as the Wirksworth classis (ref: D125).  Much of its business consisted of the examination and ordination of candidates for the ministry, chiefly, but not exclusively, within the area of Wirksworth Wapentake. When the monarch was restored in 1660, the Church of England was also restored as the established church.