Place:Golborne, Lancashire, England

Golborne is situated almost midway between the County Boroughs of Wigan and Warrington, close to the River Mersey which, for part of its length, traditionally separated Lancashire from Cheshire. Golborne's industries were mining and textiles as well as agriculture. A settlement at Golborne has existed since at least the time of the Domesday Book (1086). The manor was held in two moieties, half by the Lords of Lowton, and the half by the Golbornes up to the reign of Henry III, and later by various families including the Fleetwoods and Leghs. The town grew during the Industrial Revolution as the mining industry expanded. Until 1866 Golborne was a township in the ancient parish of Winwick. It was an urban district from 1894 until 1974.

In 1933 the neighbouring Leigh Rural District was abolished and Golborne absorbed the civil parishes of Kenyon, Lowton and part of Culcheth).

In the nationwide reorganization of municipalities of 1974 Wigan and Warrington each gave their name to a Metropolitan Borough which encompassed much of their respective surrounding areas. Originally Warrington was destined to be part of Wigan or part of the adjacent metropolitan borough of St Helens, but it refused to join either. This decision cut it off from the rest of Lancashire. The result was that Warrington Metropolitan Borough and its surrounding municipalities became part of the county of Cheshire.

Golborne was split, with its larger northern section going to Wigan Metropolitan Borough in Greater Manchester, and parts of its most southern civil parishes, Culcheth including Newchurch, becoming the ward of Culcheth and Glazebury in the Warrington in Cheshire.

Population increase over the 20th century can be shown by the following table (taking into consideration the expansion of area in 1933 and the split that occurred in 1974).

Golbourne in 1870

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

"GOLBORNE, a parish in Leigh [registration] district, Lancashire; on the Wigan and Newton railway, 2 miles NNE of Newton. It has a station on the railway, and a post office‡ under Warrington. It was formerly a township of Winwick parish. Acres: 1,634. Real property: £6,683; of which £1,038 are in mines. Population: in 1851, 1,910; in 1861: 2,776. Houses: 513. The increase of population arose from the demand for operatives in cotton factories. The property is subdivided. Golborne Hall is a chief residence. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Chester. Value, £110. Patron: the Earl of Derby. The church is a modern edifice, in the early English style; and consists of nave, S aisle, and chancel, with porch and tower. There are an Independent chapel, a Roman Catholic chapel, erected in 1863, a Church of England school, and charities £36."

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