Place:St. Michael on Wyre, Lancashire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

St. Michael on Wyre was an ancient parish in the north of the county of Lancashire, England. It differed from most ancient parishes in that it was located in a township of a different name (in this case, Upper Rawcliffe with Tarnacre, and it covered townships which ended up in three different rural districts at the end of the 19th century. As an ancient parish St. Michael's on Wyre had the following townships and chapelries under its control: Elswick (Fylde Rural District, #6 on map) Great Eccleston (Garstang Rural District, #10 on map) Inskip with Sowerby (Garstang Rural District, #13 on map) Out Rawcliffe (Garstang Rural District, #18 on map) Upper Rawcliffe with Tarnacre (Garstang Rural District, #22 on map) Woodplumpton (Preston Rural District, #23 on map)

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). This quotation is somewhat condensed.

"MICHAEL-ON-WYRE (ST.), a village and [registration] sub-district in Garstang [registration] district, and a parish partly also in Fylde and Preston districts, Lancashire. The village stands on the river Wyre, 3 miles W by N of Brock [railway] station, and 3½ SW of Garstang; is in the township of Upper Rawcliffewith-Tarnacre; and has a neat stone bridge over the river. ....

"The property is much subdivided. The manors of Upper Rawcliffe and Inskip belong to the Earl of Derby; that of Out-Rawcliffe belongs to the representatives of the late R. W. France, Esq.; and that of Wood-Plumpton belongs to Birley, Esq. :"Rushcutting is largely carried on in Great Eccleston; and tiles and drain-pipes are extensively made in Wood-Plumpton. :"The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Manchester. Value: £580. Patron: the Rev. W. Hornby.

"The church is of the time of Henry VIII.; succeeded an ancient one, supposed to have been built about 640; comprises nave and aisles, with battlemented tower; and includes a N oratory, formerly the mortuary chapel of the Butler family. The chapelries of Cop or Great Eccleston, Out-Rawcliffe, Inskip, and Wood-Plumpton are separate benefices.

"There are, in the several townships, a Baptist chapel, three Wesleyan chapels, two Primitive Methodist chapels, two Roman Catholic chapels, two endowed schools and three national schools. There are also, in Wood-Plumpton, a police station and a small workhouse."

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 ancient parish of St Michael-on-Wyre from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1912