Place:Shaw and Crompton, Lancashire, England

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NameShaw and Crompton
Alt namesCromptonsource: original name of township
Shawsource: current local name of parish
East Cromptonsource: hamlet in township
Whitfieldsource: hamlet in township
TypeTownship, Urban district
Coordinates53.577°N 2.092°W
Located inLancashire, England     ( - 1974)
See alsoSalford Hundred, Lancashire, Englandhundred in which it was located
Prestwich cum Oldham, Lancashire, Englandancient parish in which it was located
Oldham (metropolitan borough), Greater Manchester, Englandmetropolitian borough of which it has been a part since 1974
Shaw, Lancashire, Englandtown making up Shaw and Crompton
Crompton, Lancashire, Englandtown making up Shaw and Crompton
source: Family History Library Catalog
source: Family History Library Catalog


NOTE: References to Shaw, Crompton and Whitfield all redirect here.

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Shaw and Crompton has been, since 1974, a town and civil parish within the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, in Greater Manchester, England. The parish lies on the River Beal at the foothills of the South Pennines, 2.3 miles (3.7 km) north of Oldham, 3.6 miles (5.8 km) southeast of Rochdale, and 8.7 miles (14 km) to the northeast of the city of Manchester. It is regularly referred to as Shaw.

Prior to 1974 the parish was in Lancashire. Crompton (its original name) and its surroundings have provided evidence of ancient British and Anglian activity in the area. During the Middle Ages, Crompton formed a small township of scattered woods, farmsteads, moorland, and swamp with a small and close community of families. The local lordship was weak or absent, and so Crompton failed to emerge as a manor with its own lord and court. Farming was the main industry of this broadly independent and self-supporting rural area, with locals supplementing their incomes by hand-loom woollen weaving in their homes.

Image:Prestwich cum Oldham ancient parish.png

The introduction of textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution initiated a process of rapid and unplanned urbanisation. A building boom began in Crompton during the mid-19th century, when suitable land for factories in Oldham was becoming scarce. By the late 19th century Crompton had emerged as a densely populated mill town. Forty-eight cotton mills—-some of the largest in the United Kingdom—-have been recorded as existing in the area. At its spinning zenith, as a result of an interwar economic boom associated with the textile industry, Shaw and Crompton was reported to have had more millionaires per capita than any other town in the world. Imports of foreign cotton goods began the decline in the region's textile industry during the mid-20th century; Shaw and Crompton's last mill closed in 1989.

Shaw and Crompton, which covers 4.5 square miles (11.7 km2), is a predominantly suburban area of mixed affluence with a population of 21,065 in 2011 (UK census).

The dual name of both Shaw and Crompton has been said to make the town "distinctive, if not unique" (but there is a Compton and Shawford in Hampshire), while preference of Shaw over Crompton and vice versa has been (and to a limited extent remains) a minor local controversy and point of confusion. Today, the single name of Shaw seems to have won preference in the locality. The names merged to form the present day Shaw and Crompton, which boundary markers have used since at least the 1950s.

Shaw was originally a hamlet and registration sub-district of Crompton, and appears to have originated as the commercial and ecclesiastical centre of Crompton because of a small chapel sited there dating back to the 16th century. Before then, Whitfield had been the largest village in Crompton. In 1872, Shaw was noted as one of three villages in Crompton. However, due to Shaw's urbanisation following the construction of a major road from Werneth in Oldham to Littleborough, and the establishment of a post office sub-district named and situated in Shaw, it came to dominate Crompton. Additionally, a separate ecclesiastical parish was created for the township in 1835, which was given the name Shaw because of the church's location on Shaw Moor, in Crompton.

Governance

Following the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834, Crompton formed part of the Oldham Poor Law Union, an inter-parish unit established to provide social security. Crompton's first local administration was a board of health established in 1863. Established with reference to the Local Government Act 1858, Crompton Local Board of Health was a regulatory body responsible for standards of hygiene and sanitation in the township. Following the Local Government Act 1894, the area of the Local Board became the Crompton Urban District, a local government district within the administrative county of Lancashire.

Under the Local Government Act 1972, the town's urban district status was abolished, and the area has, since 1 April 1974, formed part of the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, a local government district of the metropolitan county of Greater Manchester, England. A [modern] civil parish of Crompton was formed in April 1987 and renamed to "Shaw and Crompton" in July 1987.

Image:Oldham.png

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Shaw and Crompton. Includes details on the pre-Industrial Revolution period in Crompton (families of Buckley and Crompton).

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 Crompton from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1911
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Shaw and Crompton. 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.