Place:Heywood, Lancashire, England

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

Heywood is now a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale, in Greater Manchester, England (until 1974 a county borough in Lancashire). At the 2011 UK census Heywood had a population of 28,205. The town lies on the south bank of the River Roch, 2.4 miles (3.9 km) east of Bury, 3.7 miles (6.0 km) west-southwest of Rochdale centre, and 7.4 miles (11.9 km) north of Manchester. Middleton (Manchester) lies to the south, whilst to the north is the Cheesden Valley, open moorland, and the Pennines.

[edit] Heap Originally Heap was a township in the ancient parish of Bury. In the Middle Ages, Heap formed a chapelry centred on Heywood Hall, a manor house owned by a family with the surname Heywood who exercised considerable political power locally. Heywood was the birthplace of Peter Heywood, the magistrate who aided the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Farming was the main industry of the sparsely populated rural area. The population supplemented their incomes by hand-loom woollen weaving carried out in their own homes. The factory system in the township can be traced to a cotton spinning mill established in the late 18th century. Following the introduction of textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution, Heywood developed into a mill town and coal mining district. A period of "extraordinary growth of the cotton-trade" in the mid 19th century was so quick and profound that there was "an influx of strangers causing a very dense population". The following description from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72 is provided by the website A Vision of Britain Through Time (University of Portsmouth Department of Geography). "HEAP, a village, a township, and a parochial chapelry in Bury parish, Lancashire. The village stands near the river Roche and the Bury and Rochdale railway, 2 miles E of Bury. "The township includes also the town of Heywood, with its post office and [railway] station; and is nearly divided into the chapelries of Heap and Heywood. Acres: 2,934. Real property: £56,545; of which £200 are in mines, £80 in quarries, and £1,200 in gas works. Population in 1851: 16,048; in 1861: 17,353. Houses: 3,535. Population, exclusive of Heywood town, in 1861: 4,529. Houses: 1,905. "There are large paper mills, cotton mills, and wool mills, manufactories of power looms and boilers, works of iron and brass founding, two churches, eight dissenting chapels, a mechanics' institution, and four national schools, mostly in Heywood. "The chapelry was constituted in 1840. Population in 1861: 7,633. Houses: 1,605. The living is a [perpetual] curacy in the diocese of Manchester. Value, £300. Patron, the Bishop of Manchester. The church is modern."

Imports of foreign cotton goods in the mid-20th century precipitated the decline of Heywood's textile and mining industries, resulting in a more diverse industrial base.

[edit] Governance the text in this section is based on a section of an article in Wikipedia Following the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834, Heywood formed part of the Bury Poor Law Union, an inter-parish unit established to provide a form of social security. Heap's first local authority was a local board of health established in 1864. Heap Middle Division Local Board of Health was a regulatory body responsible for standards of hygiene and sanitation for Heywood as well as for the rest of the township. In 1867 the local board was reconstituted as the Heywood Local Board of Health and extended into parts of the townships of Hopwood, Birtle with Bamford, Pilsworth (all parts of the ancient parish of Middleton) and Castleton (from Rochdale ancient parish). In 1879 further parts of Hopwood and Pilsworth townships were added to the area under the local board. In 1881 the local board area was granted borough status and became the Municipal Borough of Heywood. Following the Local Government Act 1894 (which formally dissolved all townships), the municipal borough became a local government district of the administrative county of Lancashire. In 1900 a part of Castleton Urban District was added to Heywood, and in 1933 there were exchanges of area between Heywood borough and County Borough of Bury. Under the Local Government Act 1972, the Municipal Borough of Heywood was abolished and its link with Bury was extinguished. Heywood has, since 1 April 1974, formed an unparished area of the Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale, a local government district of the new metropolitan county of 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.
• A description of the township of Heap from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1911. The article on Heap quickly changes into a description of Heywood.
• Greater Manchester Gazetteer. Entries for Heap and Heywood