Place:Freckleton, Lancashire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia Freckleton (#7 on map) is a village and civil parish on the Fylde coast in Lancashire, England, to the south of Kirkham and east of the seaside resort of Lytham St. Annes. In 2001 it had a population of 6,045, reducing to 6,019 at the 2011 Census. The village is near Warton (Fylde), with its links to BAE Systems. Warton Aerodrome's runway is partly within Freckleton's boundary. Since 1974 Freckleton has been part of Fylde Borough, Lancashire. It was a township in the ancient parish of Kirkham until 1866 when it became a separate civil parish. In 1894 when urban and rural districts were first formed, it became part of Kirkham Urban District. [edit] History The name of the village appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as "Frecheltun" and is said to derive from 'Farmstead of a man called Frecla', with Old English tun and Nordic personal name. It was one of 62 settlements to be found in the Hundred (county subdivision) of "Agemvndrenesse" in the original rolls. Another suggested derivation is from the Anglo-Saxon word for "lusty" or "argumentative". Freckleton supplied water to the Roman fort at Kirkham, and in the 19th century was a port for the local ship building industry. Rope and sailcloth was made in the village for many years. Balderstone Mill, erected in 1880, was the first organised factory system enterprise in the village, its weaving shed had 320 looms, and the cloth it produced sold on the Manchester Cotton Exchange. The mills closed in 1980.

There was a water-mill, situated on the Dow Brook, from at least as early as 1427, when it was in the possession of a William Hodelliston. It was sold for the sum of £350, in 1882, with the sole purpose of its decommission, to allow the marsh to be more effectively drained.

The Quaker burial ground at Quaker's Wood, also known as "Twill Furlong", in Lower Lane, between Freckleton and Kirkham, has a single gravestone. Until the 1920s, Freckleton had a tollgate and travelers to Lytham St. Annes and Preston had to pay a toll to use the turnpike road. The toll was collected at the toll house bridge. The toll could be avoided by crossing the Dow brook and walking along the bridle way.

In World War II, American forces from the neighbouring Warton Aerodrome resided in the village. The Freckleton Air Disaster occurred on 23 August 1944, when an aircraft attempting to land at Warton during stormy weather crashed onto Freckleton's Holy Trinity School. Sixty-one people lost their lives, including thirty-eight children, their two teachers, and the three air crew. Other victims included several residents and US personnel in a snack bar across the road from the school. Annual commemorations still take place, attended by residents and US veterans. The aerodrome was subsequently purchased by English Electric, now BAE Systems, and many BAE employees live in the village.

The area around the village War Memorial, now protected by railings, was once the village green, where the smithy and the toll house were located.

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 Freckleton from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1912