Doncaster Family History Society

Despite some expensive housing conversions for commuters, Loversall remains little more than a hamlet, numbering a couple of hundred people, with a fine medieval parish church. Loversall Hall, next to the church, is a large but plainly-built house, its principal front built by the Fenton family of Leeds between 1808 and 1816, although the buildings at the rear are probably seventeenth century. Loversall was part of the manor of Doncaster, and its church, dedicated to St Katherine, was technically a chapel of ease in the parish of Doncaster, rather than a fully-fledged parish church.

The history of its parish records illustrates both the vulnerability of archives and one of the uses of bishop’s transcripts. Although the church at Loversall is medieval, the parish registers begin only in the nineteenth century. The reason for this lies in the events of a winter’s night on 7 and 8 February 1844, when thieves broke into the church. They broke open the parish chest, probably in hope of stealing the communion plate. Finding no valuable contents, they made a fire to warm themselves in the bitter winter weather. Their fuel was the oak chest and most of its contents, namely all the parish registers but the most recent marriage and burial registers.

Fortunately, the information in the registers was not irretrievably lost. Since1598, parishes had been obliged to make a yearly return to the bishop of the diocese, listing all the baptisms, marriages and burials which had taken place in the parish in the previous year. Loversall, like other local parishes, sent in its returns to York, and these are now to be found in the Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, along with all the other records of the archdiocese of York. The parsih register transcripts for Loversall survive from 1601 to 1830, and so most of the information which would have been found in the parish registers is still available to family historians.

Records and indexes of Loversall, St Katherine available at Doncaster Archives are :
Baptisms 1844-1970 Marriages 1837-1976 Burials 1814-1980 Banns 1878-1966
Index : Banns 1878-1976
Bishop’s transcripts 1601-1830