This complete transcription and edition of the Burton parish registers has been prepared by Peter Gaskins, local historian and resident of the town, with great care and attention to detail from the original registers now deposited in the safe keeping of the Cumbria Record Offrce in Kendal. All surviving entries of baptisms, marriages and burials from 1653 up to 1837 have been checked against the bishop's transcripts (contemporary annual copies sent to the Bishop of Chester from 1676 and to the Diocesan Registrar from 1813). The volume is fully indexed and also contains the first complete and accurate list of vicars and churchwardens of the parish. The entries cover not only the market town of Burton itself, but also the four townships of Burton, Dalton, Preston Patrick and Holme into which the parish was divided, together with Holmescales (a hamlet in Old Hutton which belonged ecclesiastically to Burton parish). The chapel at Preston Patrick was consecrated and made parochial in 1701, but its baptism, marriage and burial entries were included in the Burton registers from 1703.

This first parish register volume to be published by the Society for over 30 years represents an important opening up of source material of the later 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries for the south of the county (only Crosthwaite and Lyth, Middleton in Lonsdale and part of Kendal having been published previously). This will principally benefit family historians and genealogists, but also enable social and economic conditions and demographic trends to be studied in depth by both local and regional historians. Burton's market, established in 1661, took full advantage of its situation astride the main route north from Lancaster to Kendal (with the establishment of the turnpike in 1753) and became the most extensive corn market in the county in the 18th century, only declining after the opening of the Canal in 1819, which with the coming of the railway in 1847 adversely affected the trade of the town. The period covered by the parish registers therefore is one of the most significant and expansive in its history.

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