Penley

• Cole, J. R.  and A. J. Parkinson.          Penley Old Hall, Clwyd       Archaeology in Wales, Vol. 32 (1992), p. 31-35.
• Jones,  Keith B.  [and various authors].             Penley         [Denbigh : Gee & Son, 1999].
• Pratt, Derrick.    A Penley register of the interregnum       Hel achau, 46 (1995), p. 14-17
• Pratt, Derrick.           Penley's other missing register?       Hel achau, No. 48 (Apr. 1996), p. 5-7.
• Pratt, Derrick.         Church of St. Mary Magdalene, Penley        c1980
• Pratt, Derrick.             Perpetual curacy of Penley, Flintshire        [Shrewsbury] : Shropshire Family History Society, 1975.
• Pratt, Derrick & Shirley            The spirit of Penley. 1 :          Ashbourne : Landmark, 2003.
• Pratt, Shirley and Derrick.            A millennium history of Penley            Wrexham : Bridge Books, 2000.         

Ordnance Survey reference SJ 413400.
The original church was built "of timber, lath and plaister" in about 1538 as a chapel of ease to Ellesmere, Shropshire. In 1793 it was demolished, and replaced by a brick structure. After 100 years, this had become structurally unsound; and work began on its successor on 19 June 1899. The first service in the new church was held on 15 November 1901, and it was consecrated on 5 June 1902.
The church is dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene.

The Clwyd FHS website has a photograph of the church.

Penley Church  on the People's Collection Wales site

Nonconformist Churches

"Welsh Church Commission - County of Flint - The Statistics of the Nonconformist Churches for 1905" lists the following nonconformist place of worship in the Civil parish of Penley :

From early 1657 to mid-1661 Penley was an independent parish under the charge of Rev. John Broster, who kept his own register book. After the restoration of King Charles II, Broster was evicted, and apparently took the register book with him - knowledge of its existence and survival only came to light in 1995.
Penley's main registers date from 1752, and initially they included marriages - there are just two entries for 1753. Then for some reason (possibly the tightening up of regulations following Hardwicke's Marriage Act of 1754) no further marriages were recorded at Penley until February 1867. However, in the Ellesmere registers between 1679 and 1749, at least 22 marriage ceremonies are recorded as having taken place at Penley.
According to a survey which the National Library of Wales made in 1936, the register of Baptisms covering the period 1813-72 was still in Penley Church at that time; but it has since "disappeared".
Fortunately, the Bishop's Transcripts for most of that period have survived, and have been deposited in the Lichfield Joint Record Office, although the years 1847, 1850 and 1864-1872 are missing.
The missing Baptism register has been "reconstituted" from these BTs, and is estimated to be about 91% complete.

Parish Registers

• The following Parish Registers have been deposited at Flintshire Record Office, Hawarden. They may be viewed on microfilm at the Flintshire Record Office, the Denbighshire Record Office, Ruthin, and the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth.
  Flintshire Record Office has a copy of the "reconstituted" baptism register.

• Clwyd FHS has published full transcriptions of the registers / Bishop's Transcripts (complete with indexes) for the following years :

Bishop's Transcripts

• Bishop's Transcripts for the years shown below have been deposited in the Lichfield Joint Record Office.
  The Flintshire Record Office, Hawarden, has photocopies of the Bishop's Transcripts, (baptisms only), from 1813 - 1863.

I.G.I.

• The following have been incorporated into the I.G.I., as part of an "official extraction" programme.

When Civil Registration was introduced (on 1 July 1837), the parish of Penley was assigned to the No. 1 ("Overton") sub-district of the Ellesmere Registration District, which was co-extensive with the Ellesmere poor law Union.

In the GRO indexes to civil registration, entries for Penley are in the format :

• Years 1837 - 1851: Ellesmere XVIII. nnn
• Years 1851 - 1930: Ellesmere 6a. nnn

(GRO index references have no relevance at the local Superintendent Registrar's Office)

• Geograph
• Flickr

For Penley see the transcription of Ellesmere parish in Shropshire  from the National Gazetteer (1868), provided by Colin Hinson.

• Ask for a calculation of the distance from Penley to another place.

Stryd Lydan barn originally stood at Penley, Flintshire. It was built c. 1550 and was re-erected at the Welsh Folk Museum (now the Museum of Welsh Life), St. Fagans, in 1951 on the People's Collection Wales site

"North-East Wales Churches and Ancient Parish Boundaries" produced by Clwyd Record Office in 1994, published by Genuki with the permission of Flintshire Record Office and Denbighshire Archives

Kain, R.J.P., Oliver, R.R., Historic Parishes of England and Wales: an Electronic Map of Boundaries before 1850 with a Gazetteer and Metadata [computer file]. Colchester, Essex: History Data Service, UK Data Archive [distributor], 17 May 2001. SN: 4348.   Here is a gazetteer/finding aid plus a set of overview maps to accurately identify the position of parishes within the county

Map of the township of Penley in the County of Flint on the People's Collection Wales site

You can see maps centred on OS grid reference SJ417398 (Lat/Lon: 52.952395, -2.869194), Penley which are provided by:

• OpenStreetMap
• Google Maps
• StreetMap (Current Ordnance Survey maps)
• OpenStreetMap Cymru (Welsh counties only)
• Bing (was Multimap)
• Old Maps Online
• National Library of Scotland (Old Ordnance Survey maps)
• Vision of Britain (Click "Historical units & statistics" for administrative areas.)
• Magic (Geographic information) (Click + on map if it doesn't show)
• GeoHack (Links to on-line maps and location specific services.)

• All places within the same township/parish shown on an Openstreetmap map.
• Nearby townships/parishes shown on an Openstreetmap map.
• Nearby places shown on an Openstreetmap map.