Place:Euxton, Lancashire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia Euxton is a large village with a long history and a civil parish within the Borough of Chorley, in Lancashire, England. The village is situated just to the west of the centre of Chorley, and to the south of Clayton le Woods. The population of the civil parish as taken at the 2011 census was 9,993, however, the population is now significantly higher due to the increase in housing developments. Euxton had a population of 8,318 in the UK census of 2001. Euxton extends around 2.5 miles from east to west and 2 miles north to south. The village is made up of several areas including Runshaw Moor, Balshaw, Shaw Green, Daisy Hill, Buckshaw, Pincock, Primrose Hill, Glead Hill, Dawbers, Spout Hillock, Culbeck and Peartree. (Only the settlements in italics have been redirected to Euxton in WeRelate; the others are probably modern inventions.)

In 1934 17 acres of Euxton Civil Parish were transferred into Chorley Municipal Borough (Source: A Vision of Britain through Time). The remainder of Euxton became more closely linked to Chorley following the nationwide alterations to local government structure which occurred in 1974 (from 1894 until 1974 the parish was in Chorley Rural District which was separate from Chorley Municipal Borough).

Prior to 1894 Euxton was part of the Leyland subdistrict of Chorley Registration District and Poor Law Union, and a township in the ancient parish of Leyland in the Leyland Hundred.

History

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

Euxton's original village settlement in Pincock was based near the ford over the River Yarrow, along the route of the old Roman road, Watling Street (now the A49 road), that runs through the length of the village, from Pincock to Packsaddle.

Demonstrating its significance, Euxton had a market charter granted in 1301 by Edward I and, whilst the area was called Euxton, the township was called Euxtonburgh.

The manorial seat was Euxton Hall owned first by the Molyneux family and later by the Anderton family. A new manor house is said to have been built in the early 16th century by Hugh Anderton (1466-1516/17) and a further hall was built by William Anderton (c.1708-44) in 1769 and rebuilt on the same site but on a grander scale in 1850. Euxton Hall is now a single-floor private hospital (the upper floor was demolished following a fire).

The hall had three lodge houses, one at the bottom of Chapel Brow, one at main gates of Euxton Park on Wigan Road and one on Dawber's Lane which is now much extended and known as Dower House. The centre of the village later moved from the old ford to be closer to Euxton Hall and its chapel (now Euxton Parish Church which was designed by architect E. W. Pugin (1834–1875) and built in 1866 as a private chapel for the Anderton family who were Roman Catholics).

Whilst the oldest extant building is believed to be the parish church and although Euxton Hall is likely to be older in places, dating back to 1662, Armetriding Farm is believed to be the oldest dwelling house. However one of the most significant buildings is Buckshaw Hall, an H-plan two-storey timber framed property on a sandstone base, with both brick and wattle and daub infilling and a slate roof.

Industry

There was a large Royal Ordnance Factory (ROF Chorley) built here during preparations for the Second World War. At its peak the factory employed over 40,000 people, and had its own railway station. It was probably the biggest munitions-filling factory in the world, and it is said that the bouncing bombs used in the Dambusters raid were made there. ROF Chorley later came under the ownership of British Aerospace, and in subsequent years was closed down with the land being sold. In the early 2000s the former ROF Chorley site was effectively flattened and sanitised, so that the land could be transformed into the new Buckshaw Village.

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 Euxton from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1911