Place:Lancaster Rural, Lancashire, England

Watchers
NameLancaster Rural
TypeRural district
Coordinates54.047°N 2.801°W
Located inLancashire, England     (1894 - 1974)
See alsoLancaster (borough), Lancashire, Englanddistrict municipality of which it has been a part since 1974.

Lancaster Rural District was established in 1894 and was abolished when the Borough of Lancaster was formed in 1974. It was composed of the rural areas surrounding the Municipal Borough of Lancaster. The towns of Morecambe and Carnforth were urban districts and thus outside of the jurisdiction of Lancaster Rural District. In 1928 Morecambe and its neighbouring parish of Heysham formed a joint municipal borough. The geographical co-ordinates given are those of Lancaster which is relatively close to the centre of the rural district.

Most of the parishes were quite small in terms of population and in many places people made their living from the land and the nearby Morecambe Bay.

NOTE: #8 on the map has been omitted in error. After checking with the original map the table below has been amended to compensate.

Civil Parishes

1AldcliffeImage:Lancaster RD 1894 no titles 125pc.png
2Ashton with Stodday
3Bolton le Sands
4Bulk
5Cockerham
6Ellel
7Heaton with Oxcliffe
9Heysham
10Middleton (near Lancaster)
11Overton
12Over Wyresdale
13Priest Hutton
14Scotforth
15Silverdale
16Skerton
17Slyne with Hest
18Thurnham (near Lancaster)
19Warton (Carnforth), known from 1866-1935 as Warton-with-Lindeth)
20Yealand Conyers
21Yealand Redmayne

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.