Place:Newton le Willows, Lancashire, England

Watchers
NameNewton le Willows
Alt namesNewetonsource: Domesday Book (1985) p 156
Newton-in-Mackerfieldsource: Family History Library Catalog
Newton in Makerfieldsource: name 1894-1939
Newton-le-Willowssource: hyphenated
Earlestownsource: town district
Vulcan Villagesource: town district
Wargravesource: town district
TypeTownship, Urban district
Coordinates53.45°N 2.633°W
Located inLancashire, 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
St. Helens (metropolitan borough), Merseyside, Englanddistrict municipality in which it has been located since 1974
Contained Places
Cemetery
Lower Ince Cemetery
source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
source: Family History Library Catalog
NOTE: There is another much smaller place named Newton le Willows just south of Patrick Brompton in the North Riding of Yorkshire.


the text in this article is based on one in Wikipedia

Newton le Willows has been since 1974 a small market town within the Metropolitan Borough of St. Helens, in Merseyside, England. Until 1974 the town was a part of Lancashire.

It is situated about midway (about 15 miles from each) between the cities of Manchester and Liverpool, 4 miles (6.4 km) to the east of St. Helens, 5 miles (8.0 km) to the north of Warrington and 7 miles (11.3 km) to the south of Wigan. The population at the 2011 UK census was 22,114.

Governance

Newton le Willows was initially part of the ecclesiastical parish of Winwick, which was located in West Derby Hundred. It was made a parliamentary borough from 1558 until 1832, one of the earliest in Lancashire. From this date until 1894, the town came under the control of a Court Leet and Improvement Commissioners.

The developing industrial town was then created into an urban district under the name Newton in Makerfield. The name of the urban district was changed in 1939 to Newton le Willows.

On 1 April 1974 it lost its independence when Newton le Willows Council merged with a number of neighbouring local authorities, to create St. Helens Metropolitan Borough Council in Merseyside.

Image:Warrington area 1900.png

Local history in brief from Wikipedia

Newton's history since the 19th century has been very closely linked with the railway industry. The Vulcan Foundry was opened in 1831 and later developed into one of the world's foremost locomotive manufacturers. Vulcan Village, the southernmost suburb of Newton was developed to house workers from the foundry and has in recent years become a conservation area.

The western area of the town, Earlestown also developed with the coming of the railways. Earlestown was also built as a factory village, but for the Viaduct Foundry, which later became the London and North Western Railway's principal waggon works. Since Victorian times, Earlestown has been the fastest-growing area of the town, and thus Newton-le-Willows' town centre is situated in Earlestown. Between Earlestown and the Vulcan Village is the largely residential suburb of Wargrave.

The town also had other industries: printing (George McCorquodale founded his railway printing works in the town in 1846), sugar refining, chemicals, glass, biscuit manufacturing machinery and coal mining.

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 Newton le Willows from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1911
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Newton-le-Willows. 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.