Place:Crossbank, Lancashire, England

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Crossbank has been, since 1974, an area of Lees, a village and former urban district in the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, Greater Manchester, England.

Before 1974 Lees was an urban district in the county of Lancashire. The name Crossbank is thought to derive from the days of the Knights Templar when a cross was etched into an earthen bank to denote lands granted to them.

Going back to before 1894, Crossbank was a hamlet linked with the ancient parish of Ashton under Lyne, and lying within the Oldham parliamentary borough. Following the Local Government Act 1894, Crossbank became one of seven civil parishes within the Limehurst Rural District. Crossbank was not contiguous with the rest of Limehurst since it lay to the north on the edge of Oldham. In 1914, owing to urbanisation, the civil parish was abolished and its area incorporated into the Lees Urban District.

According to British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1911, the population of Crossbank in the 1901 UK census was 1,011.

There are no specific references to industry in Crossbank in any of the gazetteers or histories inspected.

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 parish of Ashton under Lyne including references to Crossbank from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1911