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- the text in this article is based on one in Wikipedia
Didsbury has been since 1974 a suburban area of Greater Manchester, on the north bank of the River Mersey, 4.5 miles (7.2 km) south of Manchester city centre. The population at the 2011 census was 26,788.
Before 1974 it was a part of the county of Lancashire. There are records of Didsbury existing as a small hamlet as early as the 13th century. Didsbury was largely rural until the mid-19th century, when it underwent development and urbanisation during the Industrial Revolution. It became part of Manchester in 1904.
Civic history
In the early 13th century, Didsbury lay within the manor of Withington, a feudal estate that also included the townships of Withington, Chorlton cum Hardy, Moss Side (Manchester), Rusholme, Burnage, Denton and Haughton, ruled by the Hathersage, Longford and Tatton families. Didsbury remained within the manor of Withington for several centuries.
By 1764, Didsbury was described as a township in its own right, although still within the ancient parish of Manchester. It became a civil parish in 1866, and in 1876 was incorporated into the Withington Urban Sanitary District, superseded in 1894 by the creation of Withington Urban District. Withington Urban District was a subdivision of the administrative county of Lancashire, created as part of the provisions of the Local Government Act 1894. In 1904, Withington Urban District (including Didsbury) was amalgamated into the city and County Borough of Manchester. Didsbury remained a civil parish until 1910. Following the Local Government Act 1972, Manchester became a Metropolitan Borough of the metropolitan county of Greater Manchester.
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History
Parish church
A charter granted in about 1260 shows that a corn-grinding mill was operating in Didsbury, along the River Mersey, but the earliest reference to Didsbury is in a document dating from 1235, recording a grant of land for the building of a chapel. The church was dedicated to St James in 1855. The area around St James' Church has the highest concentration of listed buildings in Manchester, outside the city centre.
River Mersey
Didsbury was one of the few places between Stretford and Stockport where the River Mersey could be forded, which made it significant for troop movements during the English Civil War, in which Manchester was on the Parliamentarian side. The Royalist commander, Prince Rupert, stationed himself at Didsbury Ees, to the south of Barlow Moor. It is also likely that Bonnie Prince Charlie crossed the Mersey at Didsbury in 1745, in the Jacobite march south from Manchester to Derby, and again in his subsequent retreat.
Immigration from Europe
Jewish immigrants started to arrive in Manchester from the late 18th century, initially settling mainly in the suburbs to the north of the city. From the 1890s onwards, many of them moved to what were seen as the more "sophisticated" suburbs in the south, such as Withington and Didsbury. A growing population of German merchants and industrialists in the mid-19th century earned Manchester the nickname of "the German city".
19th and 20th centuries
During the Victorian expansion of Manchester, Didsbury developed as a prosperous settlement; a few mansions from the period still exist on Wilmslow Road between Didsbury village and Parrs Wood to the east and Withington to the north. The opening of the Midland Railway line in 1880 contributed greatly to the rapid growth in the population of Didsbury, with stations at Didsbury and West Didsbury offering easy rail connections to Manchester Central railway station. The line closed in 1967, although Didsbury station building remained standing until its demolition in the 1980s.
For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Didsbury.
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 Didsbury from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1911
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