Place:Mottram in Longdendale, Cheshire, England

Watchers
NameMottram in Longdendale
Alt namesMottram-in-Longdendalesource: Family History Library Catalog
Crowdensource: settlement in parish in parish
Micklehurstsource: settlement in parish
Millbrooksource: settlement in parish
Mottramsource: settlement in parish, shortened name for parish
TypeAncient parish, Urban district
Coordinates53.45°N 2.017°W
Located inCheshire, England     ( - 1974)
See alsoTameside (metropolitan borough), Greater Manchester, Englandmetropolitan borough in which it has been located since 1974

NOTE: The ancient parish of Mottram in Longdendale and its township Mottram should not be confused with the parish of Mottram St. Andrew, Cheshire which is also in the Macclesfield Hundred. Mottram St. Andrew continues to exist as a civil parish within Cheshire, located in the "Golden Triangle" of Alderley Edge, Prestbury and Wilmslow.


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

Mottram in Longdendale was one of the eight ancient parishes of the Macclesfield Hundred of Cheshire, England. Centred on St Michael and All Angels Church in the village it included the townships of Godley, Hattersley, Hollingworth, Matley, Newton (near Hyde), Stayley, Tintwistle and Mottram itself. Under the Poor Law Amendment Act 1886 the townships became civil parishes in their own right.

Inclusion in municipal boroughs

In 1857 an area of the Stayley township was incorporated as part of the newly created municipal borough of Stalybridge and in 1881 the civil parishes of Godley and Newton (near Hyde) were incorporated as part of the new Hyde Municipal Borough. In 1885 the municipal borough of Mossley was created and included parts of Tintwistle and Stayley civil parishes.

Boundary changes

Local Government Act 1894

Under the Local Government Act 1894 several changes came into effect. Most of Tintwistle civil parish became part of the new Tintwistle Rural District, with the civil parishes of Hattersley and Matley forming an exclave of the district. The new civil parish of Mossley was created and those parts of Tintwistle and Stayley that had been included in the boundaries of the Mossley municipal borough were transferred to the new parish. The rest of the area of Stayley civil parish was transferred to the new civil parish of Stalybridge. Hollingworth and Mottram civil parishes became single parish urban districts.

On 1 October 1923 Godley and Newton civil parishes were abolished and their areas became part of Hyde civil parish.

Local Government Act 1929

Under a review conducted under the Local Government Act 1929 the boundaries of Cheshire were adjusted on 1 April 1936. Hollingworth and Mottram in Longdendale civil parishes and urban districts were abolished and they were both included in the new Longdendale civil parish and Urban District. Hattersley and Matley civil parishes were abolished and their area, which had been an exclave of Tintwistle Rural District, were divided between the civil parishes of Stalybridge, Hyde and the new parish of Longdendale. Hyde gained 722 acres (2.92 km2) of Hattersley and 307 acres (1.24 km2) of Matley. Longendale gained a total of 375 acres (1.52 km2) from Hattersley and Matley. Stalybridge gained 58 acres (230,000 m2) of Matley.

the text in this section is based on a former article in Wikipedia not in existence in 2021

Mottram in Longdendale has been since 1974 an unparished village within the Metropolitan Borough of Tameside, in Greater Manchester, England. Until 1974 it was a part of Cheshire. It lies in the valley of Longdendale, on the border with Derbyshire and close to the Peak District neighbouring Broadbottom and Hattersley. The larger Mottram parish was incorporated into Longdendale in 1936, part remaining in Cheshire, then incorporated into Tameside, as part of the provisions of the Local Government Act 1972 in 1974. Even as late as 1991, the town has the preferred name of Mottram in Longdendale.

A nineteenth century description

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

"MOTTRAM-IN-LONGDENDALE, a small town, a township, and a parish, in the district of Ashton-underLyne and county of Chester. The town stands on an eminence in Longdendale, ½ a mile W of the river Etherow at the boundary with Derbyshire, 1 mile N of the Manchester and Sheffield railway, and 4¼ SE of Ashton-under-Lyne; has environs of great picturesqueness and much grandeur; consists chiefly of one long well-paved street; carries on cotton-spinning and calico printing; is a polling-place for North Cheshire; and has a railway station with telegraph, and a post office under Manchester, both of the name of Mottram, and fairs on 27 April and 31 Oct.
"The township comprises 1,079 acres. Real property: £10,504; of which £50 are in mines, and £16 in gas-works. Pop. in 1851:3,199; in 1861: 3,406. Houses: 667. The manor belonged anciently to the Hollands; passed to the Lovells, the Stanleys, the Wilbrahams, and the Tollemaches; and belongs now to John Tollemache, Esq. Hill-End House is the seat of John Chapman, Esq.; and the Manor House is the residence of F. Grundy, Esq. Broad Bottom, situated at the railway station, is a considerable village and a place of manufacture.
"The parish contains also the townships of Hattersley, Hollingworth, Tintwistle, Stayley, Matley, Godley, and Newton, and the hamlet of Micklehurst. Acres: 23,279. Real property: £88,588; of which £1,370 are in mines, £193 in quarries, and £862 in gas-works. Pop. in 1851: 23,354; in 1861: 22,495. Houses: 4,487. There are several manors, held by several proprietors; and there are numerous good residences.
"The surface is very diversified, and contains a large aggregate of beautiful and romantic scenery. Some portions are included in the towns of Mossley and Staleybridge; and both these and others are seats of manufacture. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Chester. Value, £220. Patron, the Bishop of Chester. The church is later English; comprises nave, aisles, and chancel, with a fine tower; and includes two mortuary chapels: one with a full-length figure of Ralph Stoneleigh, in armour; the other with a handsome marble altar-tomb of Reginald Bretnald, serjeant-at-law. The [perpetual] curacies of Millbrook, Newton, Stayley, Tintwistle, Woodhead, and Godley-with-Newton-Green are separate benefices. There are chapels for Independents. Wesleyans, and Unitarians, an endowed grammar school with £65 a year, and charities £87 in Mottram township; and some dissenting chapels and public schools in the other townships."

Research Tips

Definitions

  • 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 and his bishop. 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 that never became independent civil parishes, 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.
  • Registration districts were responsible for civil registration or vital statistics and census records. The boundaries of these districts were revised from time to time depending on population density and local government organization. To ascertain the registration district to which a parish belonged in the timeframe in question, see Registration Districts in Cheshire, part of the UK_BMD website.

Helpful Sources

  • Cheshire Archives and Local Studies are the local keepers of historical material for the county. But archives for places that were absorbed into Greater Manchester and Merseyside in 1974 may have been moved to the archive centres for the metropolitan county concerned.
  • FamilySearch Cheshire 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).
  • The GENUKI pages on Cheshire and its parishes point to many other sources of information on places within the county. The many small parishes and townships that existed before 1866 are treated individually as well as the larger towns and conurbations. The GENUKI pages for individual parishes now include a map of the parish and its surrounding area.
  • A Vision of Britain through Time also has summaries and lists of statistics for each parish, but its organization is not for the beginning family historian in a hurry.
  • The pay websites Ancestry and FindMyPast have a number of county-wide collections of censuses, Church of England baptisms, marriages and burials (some from the 1500s), and some providing microfilm copies of the manuscript entries. An international subscription is necessary to access Ancestry's UK holdings.
  • A book entitled The history of the county palatine and city of Chester with the subtitle "compiled from original evidences in public offices, the Harleian and Cottonian mss., parochial registers, private muniments, unpublished ms. collections of successive Cheshire antiquaries, and a personal survey of every township in the county, incorporated with a re-publication of King's Vale royal and Leycester's Cheshire antiquities" by George Ormerod and others was published in 1819. It has been quoted by WR users interested in families traced before 1600. It is available online as images of the original pages at the Open Library (Google Books) as Vol I, Vol II and Vol III.
  • Unfortunately, the Institute of Historical Research only includes two volumes of the Victoria County History for Cheshire on their website and these only cover the City of Chester. There may be other volumes to this series in print, but a Google Search does not indicate any further volumes online.

Maps

  • Cheshire Archives and Local Studies have organized a facility to compare tithe maps circa 1830 and 19th century Ordnance Survey maps with the modern Ordnance Survey. These are available for every civil parish. A knob in the centre of the screen allows the user to move back and forth between the old and the new view. Use the key on the left to show other possibilities including land ownership.
  • The diagrammatical map of Sanitary Districts in Cheshire showing Civil Parishes 1888 produced by the Ordnance Survey and provided by A Vision of Britain through Time is helpful. "Sanitary Districts" were the predecessors of rural districts and usually followed the same boundaries.
  • The Ordnance Survey map of Cheshire circa 1900 supplied by A Vision of Britain through Time shows invidual settlements as well as parishes. There were significant administrative changes in the decade 1890-1900 that have led to some civil parishes absorbed into adjacent urban districts being omitted from this map.
  • A Vision of Britain through Time provides a series of maps from the Ordnance Survey illustrating the towns and villages of Cheshire and also the borders between parishes. The following group of maps provide views of the county at various dates, illustrating the changes in administrative structure.
  • For a close-up view of an area as it looked in the 19th century, try the National Library of Scotland provision. The maps include the Ordnance Survey (OS) 25-inch to the mile series for England and Wales for the period 1841-1952. Country estates and factory buildings on the edge of towns are labelled; roads, railways, rivers and canals are shown.
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Mottram in Longdendale. 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.



Data taken from A Vision of Britain through Time

Mottram in Longdendale was an urban district which existed from 1894 until 1936. In 1936 it was abolished to create Longdendale Urban District. At the same time, Hollingworth Urban District was abolished and the area was absorbed into Longdendale UD, as were parts of Hattersley and Matley civil parishes formerly in Tintwistle Rural District.


For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Mottram in Longdendale.

Research Tips

Definitions

  • 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 and his bishop. 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 that never became independent civil parishes, 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.
  • Registration districts were responsible for civil registration or vital statistics and census records. The boundaries of these districts were revised from time to time depending on population density and local government organization. To ascertain the registration district to which a parish belonged in the timeframe in question, see Registration Districts in Cheshire, part of the UK_BMD website.

Helpful Sources

  • Cheshire Archives and Local Studies are the local keepers of historical material for the county. But archives for places that were absorbed into Greater Manchester and Merseyside in 1974 may have been moved to the archive centres for the metropolitan county concerned.
  • FamilySearch Cheshire 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).
  • The GENUKI pages on Cheshire and its parishes point to many other sources of information on places within the county. The many small parishes and townships that existed before 1866 are treated individually as well as the larger towns and conurbations. The GENUKI pages for individual parishes now include a map of the parish and its surrounding area.
  • A Vision of Britain through Time also has summaries and lists of statistics for each parish, but its organization is not for the beginning family historian in a hurry.
  • The pay websites Ancestry and FindMyPast have a number of county-wide collections of censuses, Church of England baptisms, marriages and burials (some from the 1500s), and some providing microfilm copies of the manuscript entries. An international subscription is necessary to access Ancestry's UK holdings.
  • A book entitled The history of the county palatine and city of Chester with the subtitle "compiled from original evidences in public offices, the Harleian and Cottonian mss., parochial registers, private muniments, unpublished ms. collections of successive Cheshire antiquaries, and a personal survey of every township in the county, incorporated with a re-publication of King's Vale royal and Leycester's Cheshire antiquities" by George Ormerod and others was published in 1819. It has been quoted by WR users interested in families traced before 1600. It is available online as images of the original pages at the Open Library (Google Books) as Vol I, Vol II and Vol III.
  • Unfortunately, the Institute of Historical Research only includes two volumes of the Victoria County History for Cheshire on their website and these only cover the City of Chester. There may be other volumes to this series in print, but a Google Search does not indicate any further volumes online.

Maps

  • Cheshire Archives and Local Studies have organized a facility to compare tithe maps circa 1830 and 19th century Ordnance Survey maps with the modern Ordnance Survey. These are available for every civil parish. A knob in the centre of the screen allows the user to move back and forth between the old and the new view. Use the key on the left to show other possibilities including land ownership.
  • The diagrammatical map of Sanitary Districts in Cheshire showing Civil Parishes 1888 produced by the Ordnance Survey and provided by A Vision of Britain through Time is helpful. "Sanitary Districts" were the predecessors of rural districts and usually followed the same boundaries.
  • The Ordnance Survey map of Cheshire circa 1900 supplied by A Vision of Britain through Time shows invidual settlements as well as parishes. There were significant administrative changes in the decade 1890-1900 that have led to some civil parishes absorbed into adjacent urban districts being omitted from this map.
  • A Vision of Britain through Time provides a series of maps from the Ordnance Survey illustrating the towns and villages of Cheshire and also the borders between parishes. The following group of maps provide views of the county at various dates, illustrating the changes in administrative structure.
  • For a close-up view of an area as it looked in the 19th century, try the National Library of Scotland provision. The maps include the Ordnance Survey (OS) 25-inch to the mile series for England and Wales for the period 1841-1952. Country estates and factory buildings on the edge of towns are labelled; roads, railways, rivers and canals are shown.
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Mottram in Longdendale. 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.