Place:Rainford, Lancashire, England

Watchers
NameRainford
TypeUrban district
Coordinates53.503°N 2.784°W
Located inLancashire, England     ( - 1974)
See alsoPrescot, Lancashire, Englandancient parish in which it was located
West Derby Hundred, Lancashire, Englandhundred in which it was located
St. Helens (metropolitan borough), Merseyside, Englanddistrict municipality in which it has been located since 1974
the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Rainford has been, since 1974, a village and civil parish within Metropolitan Borough of St. Helens, in the metropolitan county of Merseyside, England. It is around 5 miles (8.0 km) north of the centre of St. Helens. At the 2001 UK Census the population of the civil parish was 8,344, reducing to 7,779 at the 2011 Census.

It is unknown when Rainford was founded, but the earliest record of the village is dated 1189. Rainford was formerly constituted as an urban district from 1894 and an "urban sanitary district" prior to that. Prior to 1974 it was a part of the county of Lancashire.

A quotation from the Victoria County History for Lancashire (see below) expands the above description:

"The highest ground, rising to 300 ft. above sea level, is near the village of Crank, a bare exposed spot. In the northern portion of the district there are coal mines; the remainder is agricultural, the principal crops raised being potatoes, oats, wheat, and clover. The soil is clayey. The Sankey or Rainford Brook flows through the whole length of the township from north-west to south-east, on its way towards the Mersey."

The VCH also states that the chapelry at Rainsford was in the hands of the Presbyterians from the time of the English Civil War (circa 1642-1660) until the turn of the 18th century when it reverted to the established church (Church of England).

Image:St. Helens D.png

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Rainford.

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 Rainford from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1911
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Rainford. 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.