Place:Crawshawbooth, Lancashire, England

Crawshawbooth was in the ecclesiastical parish of Goodshaw, and also in the ancient parish of Whalley which covered a very large part of inland Lancashire. Goodshaw parish covered an area probably limited by the size of the valley in which it was located. Both places were in the Haslingden Registration District from the start of civil registration in 1837 through to the major reorganization of 1974.

The relationship of these settlements one to another is best shown by selecting the parish "Goodshaw, Lancashire" in English Jurisdictions 1851. Note that the parish of Haslingden practically surrounds Goodshaw, and Rawtenstall (which probably had the largest population) is a very small area to the south of Haslingden. It is worth comparing this map to Google Earth.

Throughout the 19th century the civil parish (at least, the parish used for vital registrations and censuses) was called Higher Booths and it is not found on a list of ecclesiastical parishes. However, today, Higher Booths is a street in Crawshawbooth.

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Crawshawbooth is a small village on the edge of the Pennine hills in England just north of the market town of Rawtenstall, Lancashire, and just south of Loveclough Booth (which is redirected to Goodshaw). It is part of the valley of Rossendale, an ancient royal hunting ground.

Crawshaw Hall is a Grade II* listed mansion built in 1831 by John Brooks, a well-known local calico printer and quarry owner. His son Sir Thomas Brooks was created a baronet in 1891 and the following year raised to the peerage as Baron Crawshaw. Sir Thomas was appointed High Sheriff of Lancashire for 1884-85. The property descended in the Brooks family until it was sold in 1976.

The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) Meeting House in the town was built in 1716 and is one of the oldest in the world.

Goodshaw Chapel was associated with the Larks of Dean. Dean was a village in a valley to the east noted for its musicians in the 18th century.)

A 19th century description

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Crawshawbooth from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:

"CRAWSHAW-BOOTH, a village in Goodshaw chapelry, Lancashire; 2 miles NE of Haslingden. It has a post office under Manchester. See Goodshaw."

The notes on Goodshaw need to be read in tandem with these on Crawshawbooth.

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 map from the OS Series Six-inch England and Wales, 1842-1952 provided online by the National Library of Scotland is very helpful for this area. Many of the cottages from the 19th century still exist and are visible on the "Street View" facility of Google Earth.
• A description of the township of Higher Booths from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1911