Place:Ince Blundell, Lancashire, England

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia Ince Blundell (S3 on map) is a village and civil parish which, since 1974, has been located in the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton in Merseyside, England. It is situated to the north of Liverpool on the A565 road and to the east of the village of Hightown in Little Crosby parish. It has two associated hamlets: Lady Green and Carr Houses. Prior to 1974 Ince Blundell was in Lancashire. From 1894 until 1932 it was in the Sefton Rural District and then from 1932 to 1974 in the West Lancashire Rural District. It was a township in the ancient parish of Sefton and became a civil parish in 1866. [edit] History These notes are based on the Ince Blundell website Ince Blundell is probably the oldest settlement within the borough of Sefton. The name Ince comes from Hinne a Celtic word meaning "island in the marsh". This name bears evidence to Ince lying on a sandy ridge in the Alt valley, a place that in the past had been marshland. In the 14th century, John Blundell, whose family were the predominant landowners in the area, added his surname to Ince. This was to distinguish it from the Ince in Cheshire and Ince in Makerfield near Wigan. Built from 1720, Ince Blundell Hall was the home of the Blundells of Ince, who eventually became the Weld-Blundells, a family in existence until 1959. The house is a Grade II* listed building. Little has been reported of village occurences during the 19th and 20th centuries.

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 Ince Blundell from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1907