The Parish Church for Calverley Parish is St
Wilfrids in the village of Calverley itself. The church had "Chapels
of Ease" in Pudsey and Idle, which eventually had parish churches
themselves as the local population grew.
The earliest parish records for St Wilfrid's Calverley appear in 1574
for baptisms.
Due to the sheer size of the parish register files, it is neccesary
to split them into smaller sections. This prevents us from sorting the
entries by anything other than date. Please note that there are gaps
in the original data, most notably the entries from 1643 to 1649 are
lost. Please also note that the records are not yet fully transcribed.
The Gregorian calendar was not adopted until 1752, previous to this
the new year started on March 25th (Lady Day), so January 1st to March
24th would come after December in the same year. It is useful to remember
this when calculating age, January 1700 in modern terms would be January
1701.
1752 itself would be a strange year, losing the 3rd to the 13th of
September when the calendar changed over and ending on the 31st of December
for the first time.
It is worth noting that the spelling in these records vary greatly
and the searcher shouldn't pay strict attention to the spelling when
looking for an entry. As an example, the simple surname COUSIN can also
be found as CAUSEN, COUSEN, COOSEN, COOSENN, COOSINGE, COOSYNE, COSIN
and COZEN, all in an eighty year period, often refering to the same
person.