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- the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia
Burscough is a small town and civil parish within the Borough of West Lancashire in the county of Lancashire to the north of Ormskirk and Skelmersdale. The parish also includes the hamlet of Tarlscough and the Martin Mere Wetland Centre. The population taken at the 2011 UK Census was 9,182.
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Burscough was one of the two communities in Lathom and Burscough Urban District which existed from 1894 until 1931. In 1931 the urban district became part of Ormskirk Urban District. Burscough continued to be a civil parish even after the merging of the urban districts. During the 19th century it was part of the Ormskirk Poor Law Union. As can be seen from Wilson's Gazetteer quoted below, Burscough Bridge was another village within the township of Burscough. It has also been re-directed here.
GENUKI provides the following description of Burscough from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:
- "BURSCOUGH, a township-chapelry in Ormskirk parish, Lancashire; on the Leeds and Liverpool canal, and on the Southport and Ormskirk railway, 4 miles NNE of Ormskirk. It includes Burscough-Bridge village; and has two stations, of the names of Burscough Junction and Burscough-Bridge, on the railway, and a post office, of the name of Burscough-Bridge, under Ormskirk. Acres: 4,959. Real property: £12,115. Population: 2,461. Houses: 478. Many of the inhabitants are employed in the cotton manufacture. A priory of Black canons was founded here, in the time of Richard I, by Robert Fitz-Henry, lord of Chatham, and was the burial-place of the Stanleys, previous to their adoption of Ormskirk; and some remains of the priory still exist. The chapelry bears the name of Burscough-Bridge; and was constituted in 1847. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Chester. Value: £150. Patron, the Vicar of Ormskirk. The church was built at a cost of £3,246. There are a Wesleyan chapel of 1869, and a national school."
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Research Tips
- See the Wikipedia articles on parishes and civil parishes for descriptions of this lowest rung of local administration. The original parishes (known as ancient parishes) were ecclesiastical, 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.
- Rural districts were groups of geographically close civil parishes in existence between 1894 and 1974. They were formed as a middle layer of administration between the county and the civil parish. Inspecting the archives of a rural 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.
- 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 Burscough from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1911
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