Treasures from the Parish Chest: exploring North Yorkshire’s church history from archives to architecture
This page provides suggested reading and links to other websites, plus additional sources of information to find out more about parish churches and their history.
Engraving of view of Masham bridge over the River Ure from the north, with St Mary’s church in the background [EE 82/2]
Suggestions for further reading:
John Betjeman & Richard Surman, 2011 Betjeman’s Best British Churches (revised edition), HarperCollins
Frank Bottomley, 1993 Yorkshire Churches, Sutton Publishing Ltd
Pamela Cunnington, 1998 How Old is that Church? (2nd edition), Stenlake Publishing
James Stevens Curl, 2022 English Victorian Churches: Architecture, Faith & Revival, John Hudson Publishing
Stephen Friar, 2000 A Companion to the English Parish Church, Octopus Publishing Group
John Goodall, 2015 Parish Church Treasures: The Nation’s Greatest Art Collection, Bloomsbury Continuum
Simon Jenkins, 2002 England’s Thousand Best Churches (2nd revised edition), Penguin Books Ltd
David Paul, 2024 (forthcoming) Churches of Northern Yorkshire, Amberley Publishing
Gerald Randall, 1980 Church Furnishings and Decoration in England and Wales, HarperCollins
Matthew Rice, 2013 Rice’s Church Primer, Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
John Martin Robinson, 1995 Treasures of the English Churches, Sinclair-Stevenson
W.E. Tate, 1983 The Parish Chest, Cambridge University Press
Richard Taylor, 2003 How to Read a Church: A Guide to Images, Symbols and Meanings in Churches and Cathedrals, Rider
Alan Whitworth, 2011 Yorkshire Churches Through Time, Amberley Publishing
Pevsner Architectural Guides:
Simon Bradley, 2016 Churches: An Architectural Guide, Yale University Press
Jane Grenville & Nikolaus Pevsner, 2023 The Buildings of England, Yorkshire: The North Riding, Yale University Press
Ruth Harman & Nikolaus Pevsner, 2017 The Buildings of England: Yorkshire West Riding: Sheffield and the South, Yale University Press
Peter Leach & Nikolaus Pevsner, 2009 The Buildings of England, Yorkshire: West Riding, Leeds, Bradford and the North, Yale University Press
Nikolaus Pevsner & David Neave, 2002 The Buildings of England, Yorkshire: York and the East Riding, Yale University Press
North Yorkshire County Record Office collections guides:
(links open as pdfs)
- Guide 1 – Calendars, Transcripts and Microfilm
- Guide 2 – Parish Registers, Census Returns, Land Tax Returns, Tithe Apportionments, Enclosure Awards in the North Yorkshire County Record Office
- Guide 3 – Maps and Plans
- Guide 4 – Enclosure Awards
- Guide 5 – A Guide to the Location of Parish Registers in the County of North Yorkshire and in the old County of the North Riding
- Guide 6 – North Yorkshire Gazetteer of Townships and Parishes
- Guide 7 – List of Non-Conformist Church and Chapel Registers and of Monumental Inscriptions in the North Yorkshire County Record Office
- Guide 10 – List of Architectural Plans – includes plans and drawings of churches and chapels
North Yorkshire County Record Office online catalogue – to find listings of parish record collections, including parish registers, use the ‘Advanced Search’ tab, type ‘PR’ into the ‘Document Ref’ field and the parish name into the ‘Title’ field.
Yorkshire parish records online
- Ancestry UK: Yorkshire record collections webpage
- Find My Past: Yorkshire parish registers list webpage
- Find My Past: The Yorkshire Collection webpage
NB: These websites are subscription services; free access can be provided, by appointment, in the Record Office searchroom, and also at most North Yorkshire Libraries.
- Free BMD – ongoing project website to provide free Internet access to the transcribed Civil Registration index of births, marriages and deaths for England and Wales
Record Office blogs containing church-related content:
- The case of the fire at St Botolph’s church, Carlton-in-Cleveland in 1881
- Sinnington and Marrick vestry minutes
- Topcliffe Parish Records
- Medieval music: examples of manuscript fragments from our collections
- Letters of John Jackson R.A.
- The Creation of North Yorkshire’s War Memorials: Hutton Rudby
- Roads to the Past: Interpreting Tithe information
- Collection Highlight: The Burnsall Manuscript
- The Papers of William Charles Copperthwaite of Malton – Part 4
- Focus on Richmond records – Part 2
- Focus on Middleham and Richard III: The Collegiate Church
Researching church and parish history – selected web links
- Domesday Book online
- Church of England Church Heritage Record – contains over 16,000 entries on church buildings in England
- The Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture – online searchable database of English sculpture dating from the 7th to the 11th centuries
- The Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland – online searchable database, which will contain records of all surviving Romanesque sculpture from the late-11th century to the late-12th century, from over 5000 sites, many of which are churches
- Historic England Listing Selection Guide ‘Places of Worship’, 2017 – A guide to outline the selection criteria used when listing places of worship of all faiths and denominations
- Listed building descriptions & other statutory designations: National Heritage List for England
- Victoria County History for Yorkshire – via British History Online (York, East & North Ridings)
- A Church Near You
- The National Churches Trust
- The Churches Conservation Trust
- The Yorkshire Historic Churches Trust
- The Diocese of Leeds (covers the western part of North Yorkshire)
- The Diocese of York (covers the eastern part of North Yorkshire)
- Genuki website, Yorkshire webpage can help to identify in which former historic Riding a parish was once located, and the whereabouts of related church records.
- The National Archives Research Guide on Tithes
- Warwick Network for Parish Research ‘My-Parish‘ website
Websites of neighbouring and national archives
- Borthwick Institute for Archives
- Durham Record Office
- East Riding Archives
- Explore York, Archives & Local History
- Teesside Archives
- West Yorkshire Archive Service
- Archives Hub – Search across descriptions of archives, held at over 380 institutions across the UK
- Discovery: The National Archives online catalogue – search records held by The National Archives and more than 2,500 archives across the country
Aerial photographic collections
- Brotherton Library Special Collections, University of Leeds, holds the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society’s collection of aerial photographs of Yorkshire.
- Cambridge University Collection of Aerial Photography (CUCAP)
- Historic England Aerial Photo Explorer
Historic Environment Records – online archaeology & historic buildings information
- Archaeology Data Service
- National Heritage List for England – for listed buildings & other statutory designation records
- Heritage Gateway – for historic environment data online
- North Yorkshire Historic Environment Record
- Yorkshire Dales Historic Environment Record & Out of Oblivion: A Landscape Through Time
- North York Moors Historic Environment Record HER map online
- City of York Historic Environment Record
Carved stone in Hampsthwaite which reads ‘Pray and faint not 1793’ photographed by Bertram Unné [BU07295]
North Yorkshire Archives Blog 