RootsChat.Com

A note of caution.  I would advise checking on Google Earth or something before taking an elderly relative to their childhood home.  Long before computers and the web my mother was taken to see the house where she lived as a child - in quite a well-to-do area of Manchester.  She was heartbroken to find it was now in multi-occupancy, with broken or boarded-up windows and the once immaculate gardens were a junk yard. 

Sam

Ancestry's list of chapels in this collection certainly seems to confirm that it is incomplete.  For instance only three chapels in the whole Barnsley area - Ardsley, Hoyland Common (both listed as Wakefield) and Penistone (listed as Kirklees) and very few for Sheffield, Rotherham, Doncaster.  Or is Ancestry working on the new West Yorkshire, rather than the old West Ridung?  If so, presumably the above three South Yorks places have been included by mistake.  That said, the more records added, the better, and hopefully others will follow.

Sam.

Tigsy
Your father would have received a certificate when he was confirmed, but probably this has been lost.  Each parish is required to keep a register of confirmations.  This parish register is used regardless of whether the confirmation was in its own church or the candidates were confirmed in another church or the cathedral.  You would need to discover whether the register covering the relevant timeframe is still in the church or has been archived in the diocesan registry of deeds.  (I live in Yorkshire so am afraid I don't know whether the registry is also the LMA.) The majority of church members were confirmed between about 11 and 16 but a few would be older.  I understand the difficulty with your father's memory but feel certain he would not have been licensed as a lay preacher if he was not a communicant member of the church, and to be a communicant he would have needed to be confirmed, and to be confirmed he would have had to show evidence of his baptism.  The details would be entered in the confirmation register.

Sam

If you can discover where your father was confirmed, that church's Confirmation register should also have details of date and place of his baptism.
Sam

I was once told that the English record for 'Penny Weddings' is held by St Thomas's, Dudley on Christmas Day 1853 when 26 couples were married.  Please would someone check to cofirm (or confound) this claim. 

All the couples would have married in the same wedding service (or perhaps in two batches of 13) in which everything would apply to them all except the vows when each party would say "I John take you Mary" etc individually, before saying all together "to be my lawful wedded wife..."  Likewise for the brides to their grooms.

I believe the vicar wouldn't have charged a fee but everyone would have contributed a penny - hence the name Penny Wedding.

Just imagine getting all the grooms, brides and witnesses to sign in the right space in the duplicate registers in the vestry afterwards!  Especially if some had already started to celebrate the Christmas wedding.

Sam.