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- the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia
Pennington (near Leigh) has been a suburb of Leigh, in Wigan, Greater Manchester since 1974. It originated as one of six townships in the ancient or ecclesiastical parish of Leigh, that with Westleigh and Bedford, merged to form the town of Leigh in 1875. The township of Pennington covered what is now most of Leigh's town centre. Pennington was one of many sub-districts of Leigh Registriation District and Poor Law Union during the 19th century. Leigh was a municipal borough in the county of Lancashire until 1974.
After 1800 the township of was dominated by the textile industry which developed from handloom weaving which had operated as a cottage industry.
A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Pennington from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:
- "PENNINGTON, a township and a chapelry in Leigh parish, Lancashire. The township lies on the Wigan and Leigh canal, adjacent to the Bolton and Leigh railway; and contains part of the town of Leigh. Acres: 1,437. Real property: £13,666. Population in 1851: 4,573; in 1861: 5,015. Houses: 1,000. Population of the Leigh town portion, in 1861: 4,496. Houses: 901.
- "The chapelry includes only a section of the township, and was constituted in 1846. Rated property, £8,229. Population in 1861: 2,803. Houses: 531. The property is much sub-divided. The living is a [perpetual] curacy in the diocese of Manchester. Value, £220. Patrons, Trustees. The church was built in 1854, and is in the later English style."
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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 Pennington from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1907
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