Place:Higham with West Close Booth, Lancashire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Higham with West Close Booth (#13 on map) is a civil parish in the Pendle District in Lancashire, England. It includes the village of Higham which is 2 miles (3.2 km) northeast of Padiham and about 4 miles (6.4 km) southwest of Nelson along the A6068 road. According to the UK census of 2011, the parish has a population of 778, a decrease from 808 in the 2001 census. The parish adjoins other Pendle District parishes of Goldshaw Booth, Old Laund Booth and Reedley Hallows, along with the Borough of Burnley parishes of Ightenhill and Padiham, and the Borough of Ribble Valley parishes of Simonstone and Sabden. The area of the parish north of Stump Hall Road is part of the Forest of Bowland Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

For code for numbered places, see the page for Burnley Rural District.

Higham with West Close Booth was once a township in the ancient parish of Whalley. It became a civil parish in 1866, and formed a part of the Burnley Rural District from 1894 until 1974. The township included a detached area south of the village of Fence, but this part transferred to Old Laund Booth parish in 1898. A part of the parish also transferred to Sabden on its creation in 1904. The neighbouring civil parish of Northtown (historically associated with Padiham) was merged into Simonstone in 1983. However, after a public campaign to move Simonstone into the Borough of Ribble Valley and Boundary Commission review completed in 1985, a part of Northtown lying north of the A6068 Padiham Bypass was added to Higham with West Close Booth.

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 Higham with West Close Booth from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1911