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Civil Parishes
Preston Registration District, circa 1870
A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Preston Registration District from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72. [The data has been put into paragraphs for easier reading.]
- "The District.—The sub-district of [Preston] is co-terminate with the borough. The district comprehends also
- the sub-district of Longton, containing the parishes of Hoole and Penwortham;
- the sub-district of Walton le Dale, containing the Blackburn townships of Walton le Dale, Cuerdale, and Samlesbury;
- the sub-district of Alston, containing the parish of Ribchester, and the townships of Grimsargh with Brockholes, Ribbleton, and Alston;
- and the sub-district of Broughton, containing the four other Preston townships, the Lancaster township of Fulwood, the St. Michael township of Wood-Plumpton, and the Kirkham townships of Whittingham and Goosnargh with Newsham.
- Acres: 68,035. Poor-rates in 1863: £82,101. Population in 1851: 96,545; in 1861: 110,523. Houses: 19,982. Marriages in 1863: 1,005; births: 4,139, of which 382 were illegitimate; deaths: 2,693, of which 1,294 were at ages under 5 years, and 33 at ages above 85. Marriages in the ten years 1851-60, 10,669; births, 39,176; deaths, 28,130.
- The places of worship: in 1851, were 28 of the Church of England, with 20,506 sittings; 4 of Independents, with 2,030 [sittings]; 3 of Baptists, with 976 [sittings]; 1 of Quakers, with 528 [sittings]; 1 of Unitarians, with 145 [sittings]; 4 of Wesleyans, with 3,867 [sittings]; 2 of Primitive Methodists, with 1,034 [sittings]; 1 of the Wesleyan Association, with 490 [sittings]; 1 of Lady Huntingdon's Connexion, with 800 [sittings]; 1 of the New Church, with 250 [sittings]; 1 undefined, with 200 [sittings]; and 13 of Roman Catholics, with 7,646 [sittings].
- The schools were 50 public day schools, with 7,779 scholars; 96 private day-schools, with 3,191 [scholars]; 78 Sunday schools, with 16,197 [scholars]; and 16 evening schools for adults, with 623 [scholars]. There are three workhouses respectively in Preston, Ribchester, and Wood-Plumpton; and, at the census of 1861, they had 282, 113, and 53 inmates."
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.
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