Place:Mossley, Lancashire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Mossley is now a small town and civil parish in Tameside, Greater Manchester, England. The town is in the upper Tame Valley in the foothills of the Pennines, 3 miles (4.8 km) northeast of central Ashton under Lyne and 8.9 miles (14.3 km) east of Manchester.

The historic counties of Lancashire, Cheshire and the West Riding of Yorkshire meet in Mossley and local government wards and church parishes correspond to their boundaries. In 2011, Mossley had a population of 10,921. It is the only parished area of Tameside, having had a parish council since 1999.

Governance

Following the passing of the Public Health Act 1848 and the Local Government Act 1857, a Local Board of Health was established in Mossley in 1864. In 1885 Mossley was granted a Charter of Incorporation to become a municipal borough, replacing the local board. The whole borough was unified under the administrative county of Lancashire under the Local Government Act 1888. In 1974 the borough of Mossley was absorbed under the provisions of the Local Government Act 1972 into the new metropolitan borough of Tameside in the metropolitan county of Greater Manchester. It became an unparished area until 1999 (see above).

The following description from 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).

"MOSSLEY, a town and a chapelry on the mutual border of Lancashire, Cheshire, and [West Riding of] Yorkshire. The town stands on the river Tame, the Huddersfield canal, and the Manchester and Leeds line of the Northwestern railway, under Heartshead Pike, 3 miles NE of Ashton-under-Lyne; was originally a hamlet of Ashton under Lyne parish, all within Lancashire; has risen, since about 1840, into great manufacturing importance; was recently placed under the provisions of the local government act, and then defined to include portions of Micklehurst and Tintwistle townships in Cheshire, and the entire tract of Quickmere in Saddleworth township [West Riding of Yorkshire]; includes suburbs called Mossley Bottom and Mossley-Brow.

"Carries on industry in handloom woollen weaving, in several woollen factories, and in extensive cotton factories; is supplied with gas from Staleybridge gasworks, and with water from Ashton and Staleybridge waterworks; and has a railway station with telegraph, a post office of Mossley, under Manchester, a post office of Mossley-Bottom, under Manchester, a church, four dissenting chapels, a mechanics' institute, and parochial, national, British, and Roman Catholic schools.

"The church was built in 1755, and enlarged in 1788; and contains nearly 1,000 sittings. The Independent chapel stands at Mossley-Brow, and is a large and handsome stone structure. The Wesleyan chapel stands in Stamford-road, was built in 1867, is in the Lombardo-Venetian style, and contains 600 sittings. The mechanics' institute was built in 1858, and is a large and well-contrived stone structure. Fairs are held on the last Friday of Feb., 21 June, and the last Monday of Oct.; and wakes are held on the last Saturday of July.

"The chief residences in the vicinity are Apsley House, G. Andrew, Esq.; Whitehall, G. Mayall, Esq.; Highfield House, J. Mayall, Esq.; Breage Hill, S. Shaw, Esq.; Waterton, E. and J. Buckley, Esq.; Limefield, if,. Andrew, Esq.; and Valley Cottage, J. Kershaw, Esq. The assessment under the local act, in 1864, amounted to upwards of £26,000; and the population, in that year, was upwards of 13,000. The chapelry was made ecclesiastically parochial in 1865; and is bounded from N to SW by the County brook, and the river Tame. The living is a [perpetual] curacy in the diocese of Manchester. Value: £300. Patron: the Rector of Ashton."

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 ancient parish of Ashton under Lyne from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1907