Place:Bury, Lancashire, England

NameBury
Alt namesBesses o'th' Barnsource: hamlet in parish
Fishpoolsource: hamlet in parish
Pits o'th' Moorsource: name of protestant chapel within Bury
TypeAncient parish, Borough (county)
Coordinates53.594°N 2.295°W
Located inLancashire, England     ( - 1974)
See alsoSalford Hundred, Lancashire, Englandhundred in which it was located
Bury (metropolitan borough), Greater Manchester, Englandmetropolitan borough of which it has been a part since 1974


the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Bury is a large market town now located in Greater Manchester, England, on the River Irwell 5.5 miles (8.9 km) east of Bolton, 5.9 miles (9.5 km) southwest of Rochdale and 7.9 miles (12.7 km) northwest of Manchester. Since 1974 Bury has been the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Bury. In the UK census of 2011 the borough had a population of 187,474.

Prior to 1974 Bury was in the county of Lancashire. Bury is known today for its open-air Bury Market and the traditional local dish, black pudding. Bury expanded in the Industrial Revolution as a mill town manufacturing textiles.

Bury-born Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850) was Prime Minister of Great Britain and founded London's Metropolitan Police and the British Conservative Party. The Peel Memorial stands outside Bury parish church and the Peel Monument is on Holcombe Hill, Ramsbottom, overlooking the borough.

Govenance

The town was initially an ancient parish for a township of the same name and the townships of Elton, Heap (now Heywood), Walmersley with Shuttleworth, Tottington, and Musbury, as well as the oddly named township of Cowpe Lench Newhall Hey and Hall Carr in the north of the parish. In the mid 19th century it became a "select vestry" with a "board of guardians for the poor". It was granted the title of municipal borough in 1876 and this was raised to county borough in 1889.

In 1894 the new civil parish and urban district of Ramsbottom was carved from the northern part of Bury. This was centred on a village of that name 4 miles north of Bury's main settlement and took in most of the northern townships.

With the passage of the Local Government Act 1972, Bury merged with the neighbouring municipal boroughs of Radcliffe and Prestwich, together with the urban districts of Whitefield, Tottington and Ramsbottom in 1974 to become the Metropolitan Borough of Bury within the newly formed metropolitan county of Greater Manchester, England.

Image:Bury ancient parish 1.png

History

the text in this section is based on a section of an article in Wikipedia

The name Bury comes from an Old English word, meaning "castle", "stronghold" or "fort", an early form of modern English "borough".

Bury was formed around its ancient market place but there is evidence of activity dating back to the period of Roman occupation. Before the River Irwell was diverted to its present course it flowed by the foot of the rock from which the road 'The Rock' takes its name. This provided the platform for the fortified manor house, parish church and a few houses nestling around the village square. The most imposing building in the early town would have been Bury Castle, a medieval manor house built in 1469. It sat in a good defensive position on high ground overlooking the Irwell Valley.

The Pilkington family whose main manor was in Prestwich, not far from Bury, suffered badly in the Wars of the Roses when, despite geography, they supported the House of York. After Richard III was killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, Thomas Pilkington was captured and later executed. The outcome of the battle was the Lancastrian Duke of Richmond being crowned Henry VII by Sir William Stanley (1435-1495). As a reward for the support of his family, his brother Thomas Stanley was created Earl of Derby and, amongst other lands, the confiscated Pilkington estate in Bury was presented to him.

Between 1801 and 1830, the population of the town more than doubled from 7,072 to 15,086. This was the time when the factories, mines and foundries, with their spinning machines and steam engines, began to dominate the landscape. In 1822 Bury Savings Bank opened on Silver Street established under government control and later became the Trustee Savings Bank (now known by its initials TSB).

Industrial Revolution

Domestic, i.e., carried out in the home, textile production was an important factor in the local economy at a time when Bury's textile industry was dominated by woollens, and based upon the domestic production of yarn and cloth, as well as water-powered fulling mills.

Development was swift in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The establishment in 1773 by the family of Sir Robert Peel of Brooksbottom Mill in Summerseat (near Ramsbottom, north of Bury, as a calico printing works marked the beginning of the cotton industry in Bury. By the early 19th century, cotton was the predominant textile industry, with the Rivers Roch and Irwell providing power for spinning mills and processing water for the finishing trades.

Development was further promoted when the town was linked to the national canal network by the Manchester, Bolton & Bury Canal, fully opened in 1808. A second mill was developed by the Peel family in 1790. There were seven cotton mills in Bury by 1818. By 1901 Bury's population had grown to 58,029.

Following the canals, railways were opened, linking the town to Manchester (via Prestwich and Radcliffe), to Rawtenstall and to Accrington. There were connections to the neighbouring mill towns of Bolton, Heywood and Rochdale. As well as the many cotton mills, other industries which thrived included paper–making, calico printing and some light engineering. The town expanded to incorporate the former townships of Elton, Walmersley and Heap, and rows of terraced houses encircled the town centre by the turn of the 19th century. Districts such as Freetown, Fishpool and Pimhole were transformed from farmers' fields to rows of terraces beside the factories and mills.

The houses were of the most limited kind, without basic facilities, sewers or proper streets. The result was the rapid spread of disease and high mortality rates in crowded areas. Towns like Bury were likened to 'camps' where newcomers sought work in mill, mine or forge. Many, often from Ireland, found shelter in lodging houses. Of 38 surveyed in Bury, 73% had men and women sharing beds indiscriminately, 81% were filthy and the average was 5.5 persons to a bed.

Twentieth century

The post World War 2 period saw a major decline in the cotton industry and, in common with many neighbouring towns, Bury's skyline was soon very different, with countless factory chimneys being pulled down and the associated mills closing their doors for ever.

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 Vision of Britain Through Time on Bury.
  • A description of the parish of Bury from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1912. This article contains a map of the ancient parish.
  • A description of the township of Bury from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1912
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Bury, Greater Manchester. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.