Place:Parbold, Lancashire, England

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia Parbold is a large commuter village and civil parish now in the Borough of West Lancashire in Lancashire, England. It covers an area of 210 acres (85 ha) and has a population of 2,700. From 1894 until 1974 Parbold was a civil parish within Wigan Rural District. Until the late 19th century, Parbold was part of the parish of Eccleston (near Chorley) and the Leyland Hundred, or "Leylandshire", an ancient subdivision of Lancashire that included other parishes such as Brindle, Chorley, Croston, Penwortham and Standish. [edit] History The earliest known reference to Parbold is in the late 12th century, where grants of land were made to nearby Burscough Priory (pronounced Bursk-owe). After the Norman conquest, Parbold was part of the Barony of Manchester. Little development occurred from this time until the mid 18th century. Parbold became a civil parish in 1894.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, a number of coal mines worked nearby, rather meagre seams; hard sandstone was also quarried. Both coal and sandstone could be exported over the waterways; boatbuilding was a minor economic activity in Parbold around this time. The old windmill that is located next to the canal replaced an earlier water cornmill which once stood on Alder Lane, and was in use until 1985.

Parbold railway station, built in the mid 19th century by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, radically altered the village; it allowed middle class workers to live in Parbold and commute to urban areas as far away as central Manchester.

Douglas

Douglas was a chapelry or vicarage established in 1789 within the township of Parbold on the border of the current parish of Upholland. Parishes in this area appear to have been renamed and their borders redrawn during the 19th century. It has been redirected here. There was reference to Douglas in the GENUKI article on Ecclston and a map of Lancashire in Phillimore's Atlas & Index of Parish Registers, published by the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies, Northgate, Canterbury, Kent, England indicated its location within Eccleston parish.

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 Parbold from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1911