Place:Ashton in Makerfield, Lancashire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia Since 1974 the principal part of Ashton in Makerfield has been a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, Greater Manchester. A second section of the former urban district is now situated in Metropolitan Borough of St. Helens, Merseyside. The town is situated 4.2 miles (6.8 km) south of Wigan, 7 miles (11.3 km) north-northwest of Warrington, 15.1 miles (24.3 km) east-northeast of Liverpool and 16 miles (26 km) west of the city of Manchester. In 2001 the Wigan part had a population of 28,505. The place has long been a centre for the manufacture of locks and hinges, but also sits on the Lancashire Coalfield, and so was a coal mining district. Until 1894 Ashton in Makerfield (known simply as Ashton in the Victoria County History of Lancashire) was a township in the ancient parish of Winwick, part of the West Derby Hundred of Lancashire. By an Act in 1845 Winwick was divided and Holy Trinity Church, in Downall Green was made the principal parish church of Winwick; while St. Thomas's in the village of Ashton in Makerfield was made the parish church of a second parish which at this point became an ancient parish; both churches were part of the Diocese of Liverpool. By the Local Government Act 1894 Ashton in Makerfield was made an Urban District.

In 1974, under the Local Government Act 1972, the district was split administratively with Garswood, Pewfall Colliery and Downall Green (redirected to Winwick), going to the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens in Merseyside, and the remainder of the urban district (Bryn, Ashton, Ashton Heath, Landgate, Stubshaw Cross and Town Green) going to the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan in Greater Manchester. After 1986 its administration came under the Wigan and St Helens Unitary Authorities. However, Ashton in Makerfield is a town in its own right and is regarded as a "standalone urban area" in the Government National Statistics. The section of Ashton in Makerfield within the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan now creates the Bryn & Ashton Township, one of the ten areas into which Wigan Metropolitan Borough has been divided for consultation purposes. Each township has a forum, with some influence over the provision of municipal services.

Bryn

Park Lane Unitarian Chapel, Wigan Road, Bryn, dates back to 1697, although its congregation was founded in 1662. It is the oldest non-conformist chapel and congregation in the district. By the 19th century Park Lane was only one of nine non-conformist chapels in the area.

Bryn Hall Colliery and Park Lane Collieries operated in Bryn from the mid 1800s until the 1950s.

Garswood

Garswood is a village formerly in the urban district of Ashton in Makerfield, Lancashire which is, since 1974, located within the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens, Merseyside, England. It is part of a civil parish named Seneley Green.

Garswood's chief industries have been farming and coalmining. An adjacent fault has caused much outcropping of coal seams allowing mining to take place using (comparatively) shallow shafts and many drifts. The last drift mine in the Garswood area, Quaker House Colliery, closed in 1992. Extensive opencast mining has taken place in more recent times and still continues in the area.

Research Tips

• See the Wikipedia articles on parishes and civil parishes for descriptions of this lowest rung of local administration. The original parishes were ecclesiastical (described as ancient parishes), under the jurisdiction of the local priest. A parish covered a specific geographical area and was sometimes equivalent to that of a manor. Sometimes, in the case of very large rural parishes, there were chapelries where a "chapel of ease" allowed parishioners to worship closer to their homes. In the 19th century the term civil parish was adopted to define parishes with a secular form of local government. In WeRelate both civil and ecclesiastical parishes are included in the type of place called a "parish". Smaller places within parishes, such as chapelries and hamlets, have been redirected into the parish in which they are located. The names of these smaller places are italicized within the text.
• An urban district was a type of municipality in existence between 1894 and 1974. They were formed as a middle layer of administration between the county and the civil parish and were used for urban areas usually with populations of under 30,000. Inspecting the archives of a urban district will not be of much help to the genealogist or family historian, unless there is need to study land records in depth.
• Civil registration or vital statistics and census records will be found within registration districts. To ascertain the registration district to which a parish belongs, see Registration Districts in Lancashire, part of the UK_BMD website.
• The terms municipal borough and county borough were adopted in 1835 replacing the historic "boroughs". Municipal boroughs generally had populations between 30,000 and 50,000; while county boroughs usually had populations of over 50,000. County boroughs had local governments independent of the county in which they were located, but municipal boroughs worked in tandem with the county administration. Wikipedia explains these terms in much greater detail.
• Lancashire Online Parish Clerks provide free online information from the various parishes, along with other data of value to family and local historians conducting research in the County of Lancashire.
• FamilySearch Lancashire Research Wiki provides a good overview of the county and also articles on most of the individual parishes (very small or short-lived ones may have been missed).
• Ancestry (international subscription necessary) has a number of county-wide collections of Church of England baptisms, marriages and burials, some from the 1500s, and some providing microfilm copies of the manuscript entries. There are specific collections for Liverpool (including Catholic baptisms and marriages) and for Manchester. Their databases now include electoral registers 1832-1935. Another pay site is FindMyPast.
• A map of Lancashire circa 1888 supplied by A Vision of Britain through Time includes the boundaries between the parishes and shows the hamlets within them.
• A map of Lancashire circa 1954 supplied by A Vision of Britain through Time is a similar map for a later timeframe.
• GENUKI provides a website covering many sources of genealogical information for Lancashire. The organization is gradually updating the website and the volunteer organizers may not have yet picked up all the changes that have come with improving technology.
• The Victoria County History for Lancashire, provided by British History Online, covers the whole of the county in six volumes (the seventh available volume [numbered Vol 2] covers religious institutions). The county is separated into its original hundreds and the volumes were first published between 1907 and 1914. Most parishes within each hundred are covered in detail. Maps within the text can contain historical information not available elsewhere.
• A description of the township of Ashton from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1911