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Cheetham is today an inner city area of Greater Manchester, England, which, according to the UK census, in 2011 had a population of 22,562. It lies on the west bank of the River Irk, 1.4 miles (2.3 km) north of Manchester city centre, close to the boundary with Salford. It is bounded by Broughton to the north, Harpurhey to the east, and by the Manchester neighbourhoods of Piccadilly and Deansgate to the south.
Unitl 1974 Cheetham was located in the county of Lancashire. It was first a township in the ancient parish of Manchester and hundred of Salford. The township was amalgamated into the Borough of Manchester in 1838, and in 1896 it was joined with other Manchester northern suburbs to form the short-lived civil parish of North Manchester. North Manchester (not included in the WeRelate database) was abolished in 1916 when all the suburbs within it were absorbed into the County Borough of Manchester.
Cheetham is home to a multi-ethnic community, a result of several waves of immigration to Britain. In the mid-19th century, it attracted Irish people fleeing the Great Famine. Jews settled in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, fleeing persecution in continental Europe. Migrants from the Indian subcontinent and the Caribbean settled in the 1950s and 1960s, and, more recently, people have arrived from Africa, Eastern Europe and the Far East.
Heavily urbanised following the Industrial Revolution, Cheetham is bisected by Cheetham Hill Road, which is lined with churches, mosques, synagogues and temples, as well as terraced houses dating from its history as a textile processing district.
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Though Cheetham is not mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 and does not appear in records until 1212, when it was documented to have been a thegnage estate comprising "a plough-land", with an annual rate of 1 mark payable by the tenant, Roger de Middleton, to King John of England. From the Middletons the estate of Cheetham passed to other families, including the Chethams and Pilkingtons.
Amongst the Jewish immigrants mentioned above was Michael Marks (circa 1860-1907) who lived in Cheetham Hill with his family. He and Thomas Spencer (1852-1905) opened the first Marks and Spencer store on Cheetham Hill Road in 1893. The business grew considerably over following years and in 1901 the company's first headquarters was built on Derby Street.
Chetham's School of Music might be assumed to have links with Cheetham, but it is situated in central Manchester itself.
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 Cheetham from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1911
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