Place:Sharples, Lancashire, England

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia Sharples (#16 on map) was a township of the civil and ecclesiastical parish of Bolton le Moors in the Salford hundred of Lancashire, England. It lay 2½ miles north of Bolton town centre. It contained the smaller settlements of Banktop, Sweet Loves, High Houses, Gale, Folds, Belmont (once known as Hordern), Piccadilly, Water Meetings, Old Houses, and part of Astley Bridge. [edit] History Sharples was recorded in documents as Charples in 1212, Sharples and Scharples in 1292 and the manor was part of the Barony or Lordship of Manchester in the Middle ages. Sharples was the name of a local family who lived at Sharples Hall; the last was Dr John Sharples Lawson who died in 1816. Sharples contained forty-three hearths liable to the hearth tax in 1666. During the Industrial Revolution, coal was mined on a small scale and cotton mills, calico print-works, extensive bleach-works were built in Belmont and Astley Bridge.

Governance

Historically, Sharples formed part of the Hundred of Salford, a judicial division of southwest Lancashire. It was one of the townships that made up the ancient ecclesiastical parish of Bolton le Moors. Under provisions of the Poor Relief Act 1662, townships replaced parishes as the main units of local administration in Lancashire. Sharples became one of the eighteen autonomous townships of the parish of Bolton le Moors. In 1837, Sharples became part of the Bolton Poor Law Union, which took over the responsibility for the administration and funding of the Poor Law in that area.

In the mid-nineteenth century the settlement split into Lower Sharples and Upper Sharples. The destiny of the two parts were separate from 1864. Lower Sharples and part of Little Bolton became Astley Bridge Local Board of Health and in 1894 Astley Bridge Urban District before being merged in Bolton Borough in 1898. Upper Sharples, to the north, became Sharples or Belmont civil parish in the Bolton Rural District from 1894 to 1898 when it became part of Turton Urban District and in 1974 became part of Blackburn District in Lancashire.

Geography

The township, on ground rising to the north of Bolton, had an area of 3920 acres divided into two portions. Upper Sharples on the slopes of Winter Hill and Whimberry Hill contained the districts of Hordern, Belmont, and the hamlet of Bromiley and a reservoir built by Bolton Waterworks formed the boundary between Sharples and Longworth. Lower Sharples was separated from the upper portion by a detached portion of Little Bolton. Astley Bridge is in Lower Sharples. The old road over the West Pennine Moors from Bolton to Preston via Astley Bridge and Withnell, now the A675 passed through the township for five miles. Much of the land is high moorland.

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 Sharples from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1911