Place:Lathom, Lancashire, England

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

Lathom is a village and civil parish in Lancashire, England, about 3 miles (5 km) northeast of Ormskirk in the Borough of West Lancashire. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 914. The Leeds and Liverpool Canal passes through Lathom.

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Lathom was one of the two communities in Lathom and Burscough Urban District which existed from 1894 until 1931. In 1931 the urban district became part of Ormskirk Urban District. Lathom continued to be a civil parish even after the merging of the urban districts. During the 19th century it was part of the Ormskirk Poor Law Union and before 1866 was a township in the ancient parish of Ormskirk in the West Derby Hundred.

Newburgh, Scarth Hill and Westhead (re-directed here) are hamlets within the civil parish.

[edit] Lathom Manor the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia In 1066 the manor of Lathom was the most important of 17 manors held by Uctred, an Anglo-Danish landowner. These manors were set up by Æthelstan, King of the Anglo-Saxons, in the 10th century. By 1189 Robert Fitzhenry de Lathom possessed lands throughout south Lancashire, extending to Flixton in the barony of Manchester. Siward son of Dunning held the township in thanage in the reign of Henry II. Robert de Lathom, in the reign of Edward I was granted the right to hold a market and an annual fair. Robert Lathom founded Burscough Priory in or before 1189. The manor was conveyed by the marriage of Isabella de Lathom, Sir Thomas Lathom's daughter to Sir John Stanley in 1385 in the reign of Henry IV. Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby entertained Henry VII in his castle at Lathom. The present West Wing of Lathom House gives a hint of the importance of Lathom and the Stanley family who became the earls of Derby. The village grew around the castle at Lathom. [edit] Lathom House Lathom is the location of Lathom House built in the Middle Ages, seat of the de Lathom and Stanley families, twice besieged during the English Civil War (1642-1651) and subsequently bought by Sir Thomas Bootle who restored the ancient mansion. It passed through his niece to Richard Wilbraham and their son, Lord Skelmersdale. The main block was demolished in 1925.

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.
• A description of the township of Lathom from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1911