Place:Wigan Rural, Lancashire, England

Watchers
NameWigan Rural
TypeRural district
Coordinates53.36°N 2.38°W
Located inLancashire, England     (1894 - 1974)
See alsoWigan (metropolitan borough), Greater Manchester, Englandmetropolitan borough into which part of the rural district was absorbed in 1974
West Lancashire (borough), Lancashire, Englanddistrict municipality into which part of the rural district was absorbed in 1974
the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Wigan Rural District was located in Lancashire, England from 1894 to 1974. It was named after, but did not include Wigan which was an independent county borough. The rural district was located to the north of Wigan itself.

The district was created by the Local Government Act 1894 as the successor to the Wigan Rural Sanitary District. It was separated into two sections by Standish with Langtree Urban District from 1894 onward.

The rural district was abolished by the Local Government Act 1972 in 1974. Its territory was split between the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan in Greater Manchester, and the district of West Lancashire.

The map shows both Wigan Rural District and Chorley Rural District situated to the north of the black dividing line.

Image:Chorley Wigan area 1900 3.png

Civil Parishes

The parish of Haigh was an exclave, separated from the rest of the district by Standish-with-Langtree Urban District.

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.
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Wigan Rural District. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.