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The early history of Lytham is best described by British History Online, taken from the Victoria County Histories, published in 1912.
It was located on the north bank of the River Ribble, not far from the Irish Sea. The River Ribble is quite shallow and large ships could not take their cargoes up to Preston. Transfers to smaller vessels were made at Lytham Pool. The village that grew up at this point was named Lytham. Lytham was considered an ancient parish in the Hundred of Amounderness in Lancashire, England. However, the area of Lytham was originally too small for it to have subsidiary townships, but the area of Fairhaven has shown up as having a chapel.
GENUKI provides a very long description of Lytham from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72 and A Vision of Britain through Time provides another shorter one from Bartholomew's Gazetteer of the British Isles of 1887. Both describe the build-up of Lytham as a seaside resort during the Victorian era.
In terms of municipal administration Lytham was an urban sanitary district and a sub-registration district (for civil registration and census purposes) under Fylde from 1847 until 1894. It became a civil parish in 1866. In 1894 Lytham became an urban district and, at the same time, the separate community of St. Anne's-on-the-Sea which had been within its boundaries became another civil parish within the urban district. In 1922 the two towns merged to form Lytham St Annes Municipal Borough. Lytham St Annes has been since 1974 the seat of government for the Borough of Fylde.
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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 ancient parish of Lytham from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1907
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