Place:Pendle District, Lancashire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Pendle is a local government district and borough of Lancashire, England. Some sources give its official name as the Borough of Pendle (re-directed here). It adjoins the Lancashire boroughs of Burnley and Ribble Valley, the North Yorkshire district of Craven and the West Yorkshire metropolitan districts of the City of Bradford and Calderdale.

The current district of Pendle was created in 1974 as a result of local government reorganisation from

• the Lancashire municipal boroughs of Nelson and Colne,
• the former Lancashire urban districts of Barrowford, Brierfield, and Trawden,
• sections of Burnley Rural District in Lancashire and
• the former West Riding of Yorkshire urban districts of Barnoldswick and Earby and
• sections of Skipton Rural District in the West Riding

The West Riding sections today are commonly referred to as West Craven.

The modern Pendle District takes its name from Pendle Hill, a landmark in the area, and also from a Registration Sub-District in the Burnley Registration District which is described in 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) as

"PENDLE, a sub-district in Burnley district, Lancashire; averagely 3¼ miles E of Clitheroe. It comprises five townships of Whalley parish. Acres, 5,280. Population, 1,784. Houses, 381. Pendle Hill here adjoins the boundary with Yorkshire; is a limestone ridge, 1,803 feet high; was once forest, but is now partly moor and partly cultivated land; is crowned with three cairns, and with Malkin tower; and commands a view to York and to the Isle of Man."

The five townships are the present civil parishes of Barley with Wheatley Booth, Goldshaw Booth, Roughlee Booth, Old Laund Booth and Higham with West Close Booth.

Research Tips

• 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.
• FS Lancashire Research Wiki
• A map of Lancashire circa 1888 (before the existence of rural and urban districts) supplied by A Vision of Britain through Time
• A map of Lancashire circa 1954 supplied by A Vision of Britain through Time
• The Lancashire Rootsweb page includes a list of webpages produced by family historians with connections in the county. Some of these pages may no longer exist.
• Rootsweb mailing lists still have entries for the county, for Merseyside, and for individual towns and cities.