Place:Greater Manchester, England

Watchers
NameGreater Manchester
Alt namesGt Mansource: UK Counties and Regions Abbreviations [web site] (1997-98) accessed 16 Dec 2002
GTMsource: Curious Fox: UK Counties and Shires [online] (2002).
Manchestersource: Gazetteer of Great Britain (1999) xviii
TypeMetropolitan county
Located inEngland     (1974 - 1986)
See alsoLancashire, Englandcounty from which area was taken to form Greater Manchester in 1974
Cheshire, Englandcounty from which area was taken to form Greater Manchester in 1974
Derbyshire, Englandcounty from which a small area was taken to form Greater Manchester in 1974
Contained Places
Chapelry
Mellor ( 1974 - )
Civil parish
Ludworth ( 1974 - )
Mellor ( 1974 - )
Inhabited place
Boothstown ( 1974 - )
Broadbottom ( 1974 - )
Compstall ( 1974 - )
Diggle ( 1974 - )
Ellesmere Park ( 1974 - )
Grasscroft ( 1974 - )
Greenfield ( 1974 - )
Ringway ( 1974 - )
Metropolitan area
Bolton (metropolitan borough) ( 1974 - )
Bury (metropolitan borough) ( 1974 - )
Manchester (metropolitan borough) ( 1974 - )
Oldham (metropolitan borough) ( 1974 - )
Rochdale (metropolitan borough) ( 1974 - )
Salford (metropolitan borough) ( 1974 - )
Stockport (metropolitan borough) ( 1974 - )
Tameside (metropolitan borough) ( 1974 - )
Trafford (metropolitan borough) ( 1974 - )
Wigan (metropolitan borough) ( 1974 - )
Parish
Barton Moss ( 1974 - )
Barton upon Irwell ( 1974 - )
Irlam ( 1974 - )
Over Hulton ( 1974 - )
Saddleworth ( 1974 - )
Urmston ( 1974 - )
Waterloo (Ashton under Lyne) ( 1974 - )
Worsley ( 1974 - )
Suburb
Brooklands ( 1974 - )
Kitt Green ( 1974 - )
Ludworth ( 1974 - )
Moorside ( 1974 - )
Oldfield Brow ( 1974 - )
Peel Green ( 1974 - )
Ringway ( 1974 - )
Smithills ( 1974 - )
South Turton ( 1974 - )
West Timperley ( 1974 - )
Township
Barton upon Irwell ( 1974 - )
Bradshaw ( 1974 - )
Denton ( 1974 - )
Lostock ( 1974 - )
Over Hulton ( 1974 - )
Saddleworth ( 1974 - )
Urban district
Compstall ( 1974 - )
Denton ( 1974 - )
Longdendale ( 1974 - )
Saddleworth ( 1974 - )
Urmston ( 1974 - )
Wardle ( 1974 - )
Worsley ( 1974 - )
source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names


Image:Greater Manchester Boroughs pmj.png

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

Greater Manchester is an amalgamation of 70 former local government districts from the former administrative counties of Lancashire, Cheshire, the West Riding of Yorkshire and eight independent county boroughs. It encompasses one of the largest metropolitan areas in the United Kingdom and comprises ten metropolitan boroughs:

Greater Manchester was created on 1 April 1974 as a result of the Local Government Act 1972; and designated a Statutory City Region on 1 April 2011.

Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county in North West England, with a population of 2.7 million (as estimated for 2014). Greater Manchester spans 493 square miles (1,277 km2). It is landlocked and borders Cheshire (to the southwest and south), Derbyshire (to the southeast), West Yorkshire (to the northeast), Lancashire (to the north) and Merseyside (to the west). There is a mix of high-density urban areas, suburbs, semi-rural and rural locations in Greater Manchester, but land use is mostly urban--the product of concentric urbanisation and industrialisation which occurred mostly during the 19th century when the region flourished as the global centre of the cotton industry. It has a focused central business district, formed by Manchester city centre and the adjoining parts of Salford and Trafford, but Greater Manchester is also a polycentric county with ten metropolitan districts, each of which has at least one major town centre and outlying suburbs.

For the 12 years following 1974 the county had a two-tier system of local government; district councils shared power with the Greater Manchester County Council. The county council was abolished in 1986, and so its districts (the metropolitan boroughs) effectively became unitary authority areas. However, the metropolitan county has continued to exist in law and as a geographic frame of reference, and as a ceremonial county with a Lord Lieutenant and a High Sheriff. In April 2011 the Greater Manchester Combined Authority was established as the strategic county-wide authority for Greater Manchester, taking on functions and responsibilities for economic development, regeneration and transport.

Because WeRelate deals with the ancestry of families and particularly with deceased individuals, very few events to be related will have occurred since 1974. These events will have happened, for the most part, in the County of Lancashire. Except for events taking place since 1974, Lancashire should be used in place descriptions rather than Greater Manchester.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Greater Manchester.

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.
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Greater Manchester. 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.