Place:Hartshead, Lancashire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Hartshead from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72: "HARTSHEAD, a parochial division and a [registration] sub-district in Ashton-under-Lyne parish and [registration] district, Lancashire. The division lies on the verge of the county, the river Tame, and three railways, in the eastern vicinity of Ashton-under-Lyne; and it contains the hamlets of Mossley, Heyrod, Hurst, Hazlehurst, Stanrick-hill and Luzley, and Ridgehill and Lanes, the villages of Hartshead, Broad Carr, Mossley, Mossley Brow, Scout, Luzley, Blackrock, Heyrod, Ridgehill, Hazlehurst, Higher Hurst, Hurst Nook, and Hurst Brook, the chapelry of Hurst, the infantry and cavalry barracks of Higher Hurst, and part of the town of Stalybridge. Acres: 3,113. Real property: £60,022; of which £5,450 are in mines, £93 in quarries, and £176 in gas works. Population in 1851: 15,697; in 1861: 19,245. Houses: 3,777. Population, exclusive of the part in Stalybridge, in 1851: 9,323; in 1861: 12,454. Houses: 2,443. The increase of population arose from the erection of cotton mills and other extensive works. The barracks in Higher Hurst were erected in 1843, at a cost of £42,500. A church and a dissenting chapel are in Hurst chapelry; and two churches and two dissenting chapels are in the Hartshead part of Stalybridge. The sub-district is conterminate with the division."

In 1894 Hartshead became a civil parish in Limehurst Rural District. The parish was completely absorbed by Ashton under Lyne Municipal Borough in 1935.

In 1974, in a nationwide reorganization of municipalities, the Metropolitan Borough of Tameside in Greater Manchester was made responsible for the local government of the entire area.

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 parish of Ashton under Lyne from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1911 includes references to Hartshead.