Place:Skelwith, Lancashire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia Skelwith civil parish in the South Lakeland District of Cumbria, England. Prior to 1974 it was located in the county of Lancashire. It includes the village of Skelwith Bridge and has a parish council. The parish lies west of the northern end of Lake Windermere. Before 1974, when Skelwith was in Lancashire, it was the most northern settlement in the county. There are 16 listed buildings or structures in the parish, including the Church of Holy Trinity and a grade II* listed group of three houses. Skelwith was a township with a chapel of ease in the parish of Hawkshead until 1866 when it became part of a "composite township" and civil parish named Hawkshead-with-Monk-Coniston and Skelwith. In 1894 Skelwith was broken off from the composite township and became a separate civil parish. The following descriptions from two late 19th century gazetteers provide the details. John Bartholomew's Gazetteer of the British Isles of 1877 described Skelwith like this: "Skelwith, hamlet, Hawkshead [parish], N. Lancashire, in Furness district, on river Brathay, 3 miles W. of Ambleside and 4 N. of Hawkshead; [post office] called Skelwith Bridge; in vicinity is Skelwith Force, a fine waterfall on the Brathay; Skelwith Brow, eminence, is 1 mile from the hamlet. See 'Hawkshead with Monk Coniston and Skelwith.'" The following portion of the description entitled Hawkshead with Monk Coniston and Skelwith from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72 (provided by the website A Vision of Britain Through Time) is also worth noting: "The township bears the name of Hawkshead with Monk Coniston and Skelwith; and includes the hamlets of Borwick, Henakin, and Gallowbarrow. Acres: 9,152. Real property: £6,720. Pop.: 1,144. Houses: 234. The manor belonged formerly to Furness abbey; and belongs now to the Duke of Buccleuch. "The parish [Hawkshead] contains also the townships of Claife and Satterthwaite, and comprises 19,252 acres. Real property: £13,219. Pop. in 1851: 2,283; in 1861: 2,081. Houses: 415. The property, in many parts, is subdivided. Much of the land is hilly pasture. Slate and building stone are quarried; copper ore is worked; and iron ore and other useful minerals occur. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Carlisle. Value: £150. Patron: the Duchy of Lancaster. The chapelries of Satterthwaite, Brathay, and Low Wray are separate benefices. There are chapels of ease in Skelwith and Claife, and a Quakers' chapel at Colthouse."

For code for numbered places, see the page for Ulverston Rural District. The smaller urban disticts are Ulverston and Grange over Sands

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 Skelwith in the article "Townships: Hawkshead and Monks Coniston with Skelwith" from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1914
• Further sources for family history in Skelwith may be found under its ancient parish of Hawkshead.