- the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia
Litchurch is an area of the city of Derby in Derbyshire, England. Originally an obscure locality on the edge of Derby, rapid urbanisation and population growth in the 19th century led to it briefly existing as a separately governed local authority between 1860 and 1888, prior to once again being absorbed by its neighbour.
History
The name Litchurch is of probable Anglo-Saxon origin, and may possibly derive from either "Luda's Church" or "Littlechurch". One theory is that it originally referred to a now lost settlement centred on St Peter's Church in Derby. The earliest reference to Litchurch is in the Domesday Book when it was also one the hundreds of Derbyshire, meaning that at one time it was the meeting place for the hundred court. By 1300, it had been combined with the neighbouring hundred of Morleston as the meeting place of the Morleston and Litchurch Hundred.
In 1757 Thomas Borrow, Derby's Town Clerk, married Anne Ault of Loughborough and came into the use of £4,000 and lands and property in Litchurch. Up to the 19th century, Litchurch was a locality within the borough of Derby, however the coming of the railway industry to the area from 1839 onwards was the catalyst for a huge expansion of Derby's population, particularly to the south of the town centre in the area around Derby railway station. The Litchurch area was one of these growing suburbs, to the extent that in 1860 it was extracted from the borough of Derby to become a township in its own right. In 1866 it also became a civil parish.
Litchurch's brief independent existence lasted only until 1888 when it was re-absorbed into the newly created county borough of Derby. Since then, it has had no officially defined administrative function. Indeed the use of the name itself has fallen into decline in recent decades, many of the residential streets at the heart of 19th century Litchurch having been obliterated in the 1970s to facilitate the expansion of the neighbouring Derbyshire Royal Infirmary.
An early map of Derby dated 1819 shows The Liberty Of Litchurch. A street name-plate located on Normanton Road, next to Grove Street, identifies the area as "Normanton Road-Litchurch". The area also had a gallows located in what is now Derby Arboretum. Litchurch loaned its name to the Midland Railway's Derby Litchurch Lane Works, still the industrial heart of Derby.
Research tips
- Derbyshire Record Office website
- British History Online (Victoria County Histories) does not appear to cover Derbyshire geographically. A History of the County of Derby: Volume 2, edited by William Page is a part-volume covering the religious houses of the county. No further volumes have been found.
- GENUKI main page for Derbyshire which provides information on various topics covering the whole of the county, and also a link to a list of parishes. Under each parish there is a list of the settlements within it and brief description of each. This is a list of pre-1834 ancient or ecclesiastical parishes but there are suggestions as to how to find parishes set up since then. GENUKI provides references to other organizations who hold genealogical information for the local area. There is no guarantee that the website has been kept up to date and therefore the reader should check additional sources if possible.
- The FamilyTree Wiki has a series of pages similar to those provided by GENUKI which may have been prepared at a later date and from more recent data. The wiki has a link to English Jurisdictions 1851 which gives the registration district and wapentake for each parish, together with statistics from the 1851 census for the area.
- A Vision of Britain through Time, Derbyshire, section "Units and Statistics" leads to analyses of population and organization of the county from about 1800 through 1974. There are pages available for all civil parishes, municipal boroughs and other administrative divisions. Descriptions provided are usually based on a gazetteer of 1870-72 which often provides brief notes on the economic basis of the settlement and significant occurences through its history.
- For a more detailed view of a specific area try a map from the following selection. The oldest series are very clear at the third magnification offered. Comparing the map details with the GENUKI details for the same area is well worthwhile. Sections of the 1900 map showing parish boundaries only have been reproduced on some (but not all) parish pages here in WeRelate.
- Map of Derbyshire illustrating urban and rural districts in 1900 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time. Parish boundaries and settlements within parishes are shown.
- Map of Derbyshire urban and rural districts in 1944 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time. Parish boundaries and settlements within parishes are shown. This is not a repeat of the first map. There were some changes in urban and rural district structure in the 1930s.
- Ordnance Survey map of Derbyshire for 1967 This is the last in this series and was made while Derbyshire was experimenting with the non-metropolitan district structure adopted in 1974. It is a much cleaner map for reading the names of the civil parishes, but the smaller villages are no longer visible.
- These are only three of the series of maps to be found in A Vision of Britain through Time.
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