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NOTE: Do not confuse Ince in Makerfield with Ince Blundell, a parish further north in Lancashire. Shortening Ince in Makerfield to "Ince" is not recommended.
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- the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia
Ince in Makerfield or "Ince" is, since 1974, a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, in Greater Manchester, England. The population of the Ince ward (not parish) at the 2011 census was 13,486: there is a further bit of Ince in Makerfield in neighbouring Abram ward. Adding on this area brought the total in 2011 to 15,664.
Before 1974 the parish was in Lancashire. Ince is contiguous to Wigan and can be considered a residential suburb. Divided by a railway line into two separate areas - Higher Ince and Lower Ince, from 1894 Ince was an urban district.
Industries included coal mining, stone quarrying for the railways, and one cotton mill. The Leeds and Liverpool Canal passes through Higher Ince and sixteen of the Wigan flight of locks are within the township.
Ince in Makerfield was originally a township in the ancient parish of Wigan. It became an independent civil parish in 1866 and an urban district in 1894.
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History
- the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia
The earliest mention of the Manor of Ince and the Ince family dates from 1202 at which point it was under the barony of Newton in Makerfield (Newton le Willows). There were three halls in Ince, both the Manor of Ince and the original hall on Warrington Road were held by a family of the same name who also owned the Manor of Aspull and had close ties to the Hindley family, the lineage was replaced by the Gerard family by marriage in the reign of Henry IV who adopted the name "Gerard family of Ince" and the manor remained with them for several centuries until William Gerard sold it to the Earl of Balcarres at some point between 1796 and 1825. It was of timber framed construction.
A branch of the Gerard family lived at New Hall from about 1600 until the line died out with marriage to the Andertons of Euxton who adopted the name Ince Anderton and temporarily inhabited the hall from 1760-1818 before moving to Euxton Hall. The third manor, also known as Ince Hall, was originally a timber and plaster building built in the reign of James I off Manchester Road. It originally had a moat, Italian chimneys and an oak panelled interior, but in 1854 was heavily damaged by fire and rebuilt in plain brick of no architectural merit and modernised inside. All three halls were still standing in 1911 (Victoria County History of Lancashire) but none remain today.
The township covered 2,221 acres of mostly level ground. The underlying rocks contained strata of cannel and coal. Many collieries were sunk; the early pits were 120 to 900 feet deep, subsequently deepening to 1,800 feet. Its coal pits included Moss, Ince Hall, Rose Bridge and Ince Collieries. Mining left a legacy of spoil heaps and flashes which were known as the Wigan Alps. Stone was also quarried and used to build bridges on the railway. Ince became heavily industrialised in the Industrial Revolution. The Leeds and Liverpool Canal, the North Union Railway and Liverpool and Bury railways passed through the township and a cotton mill was built.
Platt Bridge
Platt Bridge is now a settlement in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, but it was formerly part of Ince in Makerfield Urban District. It is located two miles (3 km) south of Wigan town centre along the spine of the A573 road.
The first mention of Platt Bridge in documents occurs in 1599. The name comes from "plat" or "platte" meaning a foot-bridge. Two railways pass through Platt Bridge; one, the West Coast Main Line, the other a disused industrial line. Platt Bridge had a railway station on the Manchester and Wigan Railway line that closed in 1969.
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 township of Ince in Makerfield from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1911
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