Place:Middleton (Manchester), Lancashire, England

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NameMiddleton (Manchester)
Alt namesMiddletonsource: from redirect
Middeltunsource: Domesday Book (1985) p 156
Birch (Middleton)source: hamlet in parish
Bowleesource: hamlet in parish
Boarshawsource: hamlet in parish
Cheapsidesource: hamlet in parish
Greenhill (Middleton)source: hamlet in parish
Top of Heberssource: hamlet in parish
Hollinsource: hamlet in parish
Jumbosource: hamlet in parish
Langleysource: 20th century settlement
Middleton Junctionsource: hamlet in parish
Moorclosesource: hamlet in parish
Rhodessource: hamlet in parish
Stanycliffesource: hamlet in parish
TypeAncient parish, Borough (municipal)
Coordinates53.555°N 2.188°W
Located inLancashire, England     ( - 1974)
See alsoSalford Hundred, Lancashire, Englandhundred in which it was located
Rochdale (metropolitan borough), Greater Manchester, Englandmetropolitan borough of which it has been a part since 1974
source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
source: Family History Library Catalog
source: Family History Library Catalog
NOTE: This place has been named Middleton (Greater Manchester), Lancashire, England, by Wikipedia, but in order to emphasize the age of the place this has been changed to Middleton (Manchester), Lancashire, England. There have been three Middletons in Lancashire and they have to be differentiated. (The others are Middleton (near Lancaster) in the northwest of the county and the Middleton section of Houghton Middleton and Arbury which is now located in the Borough of Warrington, Cheshire.)

Greater Manchester was not formed until 1974, but both Middleton (Manchester) and Middleton (near Lancaster) existed for centuries before that.

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

Since 1974 Middleton has been a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale, in Greater Manchester, England. It stands on the River Irk, 5 miles (8.0 km) south-southwest of the centre of Rochdale, and 4.4 miles (7.1 km) north-northeast of Manchester city centre. At the time of the UK census of 2011, Middleton had a population of 42,972. The town lies on the northern edge of Manchester, with Blackley to the south and Moston to the southeast.

Prior to 1974 Middleton was located in the county of Lancashire and took its name from being situated in the centre of several circumjacent settlements.

Image:Rochdale.png

Contents

Middleton ancient parish

Middleton's early history is marked by its status as an ancient parish or ecclesiastical parish of the Hundred of Salford, ruled by aristocratic families. The Church of St Leonard lay at the centre of this community for centuries. In 1770, Middleton was a village of 20 houses; during the 18th and 19th centuries it grew into a thriving and populous seat of textile manufacture, so much so that Middleton became a municipal borough in 1886.

The parish was made up of four detached sections, perhaps reflecting the non-contiguous manner of land ownership in the area. Immediately south of Middleton is the ancient parish of Prestwich with Oldham which fell into two halves with Prestwich on the west end of one of them and Oldham on the northeast end of the other. The "home" section of Middleton included the townships of Middleton, Hopwood, Pilsworth and Thornham. Ashworth and Birtle cum Bamford (which itself had two detached sections) were located together to the northwest, separated by a part of Bury parish from the "home" section. Ainsworth and Great Lever (separate from each other) were to the west with the parish of Radcliffe in between them and Middleton township.

Image:Middleton ancient parish.png


Birch

The following description from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72 is provided by the website A Vision of Britain Through Time (University of Portsmouth Department of Geography).

"BIRCH, or Birch-St. Mary, a chapelry in Bury and Middleton parishes, Lancashire; near the Lancashire and Yorkshire railway, 2 miles WNW of Middleton. It was constituted in 1842; and its Post Town is Middleton, under Manchester. Population: 3,773. Houses: 747. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Manchester. Value: £150. Patron: the Rector of Middleton. The church is a Gothic structure, built in 1828, at a cost of £4,000. There is a large national school."

The Victoria History of Lancashire refers to Birch in its chapter on Hopwood, a parish that was abolished in the latter half of the 19th century and divided between Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale. Birch was in the southwest corner of Hopwood and transferred to Middleton. Following this, Birch has been redirected here to Middleton as Birch(Middleton). However, some sources refer to it as Birch (near Rochdale).

History

During the Middle Ages, Middleton was a centre of domestic flannel and woollen cloth production.

The development of Middleton as a centre of commerce occurred during the 17th and 18th centuries as a result of the effect of the Industrial Revolution. Additional to this, Lord Suffield (1734-1810) obtained a Royal Charter from King George III in 1791 to hold a weekly market and three annual summer fairs in Middleton. Suffield built a market house, warehouses and shambles (meat market) in the town at his own expense.

Middleton became a centre for silk production in the 18th century, which developed into a cotton spinning industry by the mid-19th century. The latter continued through to the mid-20th century.

Research Tips

  • See the Wikipedia articles on parishes and civil parishes for descriptions of this lowest rung of local administration. The original parishes were ecclesiastical (described as ancient parishes), 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.
  • An urban district was a type of municipality in existence between 1894 and 1974. They were formed as a middle layer of administration between the county and the civil parish and were used for urban areas usually with populations of under 30,000. Inspecting the archives of a urban 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.
  • The terms municipal borough and county borough were adopted in 1835 replacing the historic "boroughs". Municipal boroughs generally had populations between 30,000 and 50,000; while county boroughs usually had populations of over 50,000. County boroughs had local governments independent of the county in which they were located, but municipal boroughs worked in tandem with the county administration. Wikipedia explains these terms in much greater detail.
  • 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 parish of Middleton from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1911. The chapter contains a map of the parish.
  • A description of the township of Middleton from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1911
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Middleton, Greater Manchester. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.