A Brief Tour Of Bickerstaffe 

Hello Eddie. I don't know whether you have found any known family links to the south-west Lancashire area (north-west England, between the cities of Preston and Liverpool) but we do know that there were people living in our area with the surname Bickerstaff (and other variant spellings, as spellings didn't tend to be standardised a few hundred years ago). In the 1500s the name comes up in the church registers for Aughton, which is only a couple of miles from Bickerstaffe; Bickerstaffe didn't have its own church until the 1840s, so before then, you often find that the residents went to Ormskirk or Aughton for weddings and christenings. I can certainly recommend having a look through the transcribed parish registers on the Lancashire Online Parish Clerk website (it's free to search), as a simple search for "Bickerstaff" gives results for many other spelling variants, too, e.g. Bycarstafe, Bykerstaffe, Bikerstaffe, Bicurstethe. Interestingly, the surname also comes up in church records in northern Lancashire (e.g. Kirkham and Poulton-le-Fylde, not far from Blackpool).

@ODFHS SocialMedia Thank you for replying. I'm interested in the knight order. I read that the knights Templar had been near their and one of the landowners was a Bickerstaffe I think it was around King Henry. I'm curious as the coat of arms was a spear or Halbert, and black armor with silver plumes with gold trim. I'm also interested in anything that may have had mystique. As I've had recurring dream of a castle and the armor I forementioned. It was at medieval times I found the name in the book of names and ordered the book from ancestry but it has limited information. I know a bickerstaff also helped build the black tower in Liverpool

@@HazelBLAZE247 That is interesting; I hadn't come across any mention of the Knights Templar myself, but possibly other members of our Society may have done. I have had a quick look at the Victoria County History of Lancashire (1907, available online) and this link (which I hope will work . . .) definitely refers to people known as "de Bickerstath" in the early thirteenth century, so at the very early stages of surnames being used. The Victoria County History mainly talks about landowners and properties, but there might be something useful in there. www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol3/pp276-282

@@HazelBLAZE247 Additionally, if you go to the following page on our website, we have made our Research Library catalogue accessible to the general public; it's listed under "Research Library and Help Desk", and can be downloaded as an Excel spreadsheet. It's also searchable so you may be able to identify something of interest in there. www.odfhs.website/index.php/more

@ODFHS SocialMedia thank you so much for the links . I really appreciate the time and effort you put into this