Place:Culcheth, Lancashire, England

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NameCulcheth
Alt namesCulcheth and Glazeburysource: alternate name for parish
Newchurch (near Winwick)source: village in parish
Risleysource: hamlet in parish
TypeParish
Coordinates53.4517°N 2.5218°W
Located inLancashire, England     ( - 1974)
Also located inCheshire, England     (1974 - )
See alsoWest Derby Hundred, Lancashire, Englandhundred in which it was located
Winwick, Lancashire, Englandecclesiastical parish of which it was a part until 1866
Leigh Rural, Lancashire, Englandrural district of which it was part 1894-1933
Southworth with Croft, Lancashire, Englandcivil parish into which part was absorbed in 1933
Golborne, Lancashire, Englandcivil parish into which part was absorbed in 1933
Warrington (metropolitan borough), Cheshire, Englandunitary authority in which the whole of the parish was located after 1974

Originally Culcheth was a township in the ancient parish of Winwick in the West Derby Hundred of Lancashire. It was made a civil parish in 1866 and in 1894 became part of the Leigh Rural District until 1933, when the rural district was abolished. Part of Culcheth went to the newly named parishes of Croft civil parish (formerly Southworth with Croft) and Woolston (formerly Woolston with Martinscroft, (both now in Warrington Metropolitan Borough in Cheshire), and part to Golborne Civil Parish (now in Wigan Metropolitan Borough). In 1974 the part of Culcheth which was in Golborne Civil Parish was also transferred to the Warrington Metropolitan Borough in Cheshire.

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).

"CULCHETH, a township and a sub-district in Leigh [registration] district, Lancashire. The township is in Newchurch-Kenyon parish; lies on the Liverpool and Manchester railway, 3 miles S of Leigh; and has a church, Methodist chapels, an endowed school for boys and girls, and charities £49. Acres: 5,361. Real property: £10,339. Population: 2,214. Houses: 444. Culcheth Hall is the seat of the Withingtons."
Image:Warrington area 1900.png

A second village in the township of Culcheth was Newchurch (near Winwick) which has been redirected here. An inspection of large scale maps of Lancashire such as the Ordnance Survey map of Lancashire of 1900 shows the village of Culcheth and the village of Newchurch to be almost one settlement. Very little can be found regarding the administration of Newchurch prior to 1900 and thus they have been grouped into one entry here in WeRelate. Kenyon was a separate adjacent parish.

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Newchurch from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:

"NEWCHURCH, or Newchurch-Kenyon, a village and a parish in Leigh district, Lancashire. The village stands near Kenyon Junction [railway] station, 3½ miles S of Leigh; and has a post-office under Warrington. The parish consists of the townships of Kenyon and Culcheth; contains the hamlets of Risley, Bury-Lane, Twiss-Green, Wigsbaw, and Holcroft; and was formerly a chapelry of Winwick parish. Acres: 6,958. Real property: £12,758. Population in 1851: 2,688; in 1861: 2,488. Houses: 499. The property is divided chiefly among four.
"The manor of Culcheth, with Culcheth Hall, belongs to T. E. Withington, Esq. Kenyon House is the seat of R. Dewhurst, Esq.; New Brook House, of J. Hartley, Esq.; and Ivy House, of M. Tomlinson, Esq. The cotton manufacture is carried on, and bricks and tiles are made. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Chester. Value, £240. Patron, the Earl of Derby. The church is old; comprises nave, aisle, chancel, and porch; and contains some brasses. There are a chapel of ease at Bury-Lane, chapels for Methodists, and national schools."

There is no entry in Wikipedia for Newchurch. There is one small mention of it in the article on Culcheth. Information for the village post-1900 was not found.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Culcheth.
For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Culcheth and Glazebury.

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