Place:Widnes, Lancashire, England

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia Widnes is an industrial town located on the northern bank of the River Mersey where the estuary narrows significantly and forms the Runcorn Gap. Directly to the south across the Mersey is the town of Runcorn. Upstream and to the east is the town of Warrington, and downstream to the west is the neighbouring area of Speke, now part of Merseyside. In the 1750s the Sankey Canal was constructed. This linked the area of St. Helens with the River Mersey at Sankey Bridges, near Warrington and was in operation by 1757. It was extended to Fiddler's Ferry in 1762, and then in 1833 a further extension to Woodend was opened. In the same year the St Helens and Runcorn Gap Railway was opened. The railway connected St. Helens with an area in Woodend. The termini of the canal and railway were adjacent and here Widnes Dock, the world's first railway dock, was established. Prior to the Industrial Revolution Widnes consisted of a small number of separate settlements on land which was mainly marsh or moor. John Hutchinson (1825-1865) built his first factory in 1847 on land between the Sankey Canal and the railway. The purpose was to make alkali by the "Leblanc process". This was an ideal site for the factory because all the raw materials could be transported there by the waterways and railway, and the finished products could similarly be transported anywhere else in the country or overseas. Further chemical factories were soon built nearby by entrepreneurs including John McClelland, William Gossage, Frederic Muspratt, Holbrook Gaskell and Henry Deacon. The town rapidly became a major centre of the chemical industry. The substances produced included soap, borax, soda ash, salt cake and bleaching powder. Other industries developed including iron and copper works. The demand for labour was met by the immigration of large numbers of workers from Ireland, Poland, Lithuania and Wales. The town continues to be a major manufacturer of chemicals although there has been a degree of diversification of the town's industries.

In 1974 Widnes became part of the borough of Halton, in Cheshire, England, with an urban area population of 58,300 in 2010. Until 1974 Widnes had been in Lancashire where it had been a municipal borough from 1894. In 1920 the neighbouring parish of Ditton (#3 on map), along with parts of Halewood (to the southwest) (#5) and Cuerdley (to the east) were absorbed into the municipal borough.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Widnes.

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).

"WIDNES, a town, a township, and a chapelry, in Prescot parish, Lancashire. The town stands on the river Mersey, at the intersection of the Warrington and Liverpool and the Ormskirk and Runcorn railways, adjacent to the new great railway viaduct over the Mersey at Runcorn Gap, 11 miles ESE of Liverpool; rose from a population of less than 2,000 in 1851 to a population of nearly 13,000 in 1869; began, in 1847, to be a seat of extensive chemical works; produces annually about 32,000 tons of the several products of soda; produces also large quantities of nitrogenised bone manure; has likewise copper-smelting-works, iron-works, foundries, soap-works, grease-works, oiland paint-works, a limestone mill, and sailcloth manufactories. Acquired, about 1864, well-constructed docks, with 12½ acres of water area and 3,348 yards of berthage; exports coal to the amount of about 10,000 tons a week; and has a post-office‡ under Warrington, a [railway] station with telegraph, waterworks constructed in 1869 at a cost of £40,000, a court-house, a police station, a church of 1856, an Independent chapel, two Welsh chapels, a handsome Wesleyan chapel of 1864, another Methodist chapel, an ornate Roman Catholic chapel of 1866, and a national school.

"The township includes Appleton and Farnworth villages and several hamlets; and comprises 3,000 acres of land, and 330 of water. Rated property in 1841: £6,236; in 1864: £41,601. Population in 1851, 3,217; in 1869: 6,905. Houses: 1,257. The manor belongs to Mrs. Hutchinson.

"The chapelry includes only part of the township, and was constituted in 1859. Population in 1869: 7,072. Houses: 1,320. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Chester. Value: £160. Patron: W. Wright, Esq."

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 township of Widnes from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1907