Churches in Walton on the Hill, Lancashire

[zzjopark]

I have a marriage certificate (from the General Registry Office) between John Parks and Agnes Kavanagh:
27 May 1884 St James' church, Walton on the Hill - married by Banns.
I wanted to see if more information was available in the Parish records but can only find St Mary's church in or near that parish.

Can anybody clear up this mystery for me?

[BumbleB]

Ancestry have the image indexed under St James, Toxteth.

[BumbleB]

Looking at earlier images for this church -  in 1813 there is a heading on a page (dated 1813) :

Marriages solemnized in St James Church in Toxteth Park in the parish of Walton on the Hill in the County of Lancaster.

Here we are:

[zzjopark]

Thanks for the information that the church is in Toxteth Park.

[arthurk]

There shouldn't be any difference between the certificate you have and the actual marriage register. This is what happened:

1. Registers (2 copies) completed and signed by all parties at the time of the marriage
2. At the end of the quarter the minister made a copy of all entries, transcribing signatures as best he could, and sent it to the local superintendent registrar
3. Superintendent registrar collated quarterly returns from his district and sent them to GRO
4. GRO index quarterly returns and use them to produce certificates
5. When a register book was full, one copy was sent to the local register office, and they too can provide certificates from it. The other copy was usually deposited in the local archives/record office.

As a GRO certificate is based on a copy, there's a slight chance of a copying error having crept in. It also won't give you an original signature; a local office certificate might, depending on what facilities they have, but a copy** of an actual register held by archives, such as you see at Ancestry or FindMyPast, will (so long as the parties could write, of course). And as the registers were completed at the time of the marriage, they are most likely to be accurate.

**Edited for clarity (after BumbleB's reply #5):
By 'a copy' I mean here an image of the register, rather than any kind of transcript

[BumbleB]

The image of the marriage register entry can be seen on Ancestry - complete with original signatures for groom, bride and two witnesses.