Place:Rufford, Lancashire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

:the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia Rufford (WL 14 on map) is a village and civil parish in the Borough of West Lancashire in Lancashire, England. It lies at a point where the Leeds and Liverpool Canal (Rufford Branch), the Liverpool, Ormskirk and Preston Railway, the A59 (Liverpool to Preston road) and the River Douglas all meet. The civil parish includes the neighbouring village of Holmeswood (redirected here), and in 2011, according to the UK census, had a population of 2,049. Rufford is 5½ miles northeast of Ormskirk and covers 2,996 acres of mostly flat land which rises slightly towards Holmeswood in the north of the parish. The soil is loam over sand and much of the land is used for arable farming or pasture. The Leeds and Liverpool Canal and the railway between Liverpool and Preston pass through the township and the River Douglas separates it from Croston. Rufford was a chapelry in the ancient parish of Croston from which it was separated by act of parliament and became a parish in 1793. It was part of the Leyland Hundred and after 1837 became part of the Ormskirk Poor Law Union which built a workhouse and took responsibility for the poor in the area. From 1894 until 1974 it was part of the West Lancashire Rural District. [edit] History Part of the manor was granted by Richard Bussel, baron of Penwortham to Richard Fitton in the reign of Henry I. In 1278 his descendant and heiress Dame Maude Fitton married Sir William Hesketh. Sir William's grandson married the daughter of Edmund Fitton, who owned the other moiety of the manor which then descended with the Heskeths. In 1339 Sir William Hesketh was granted a charter for a weekly market and annual fair. He fought at the Battle of Crécy in 1346, and became knight of the shire in 1360. In the late 15th century the Heskeths built Rufford Hall. It was altered in 1661 and redeveloped in the 1820s. The family built Rufford New Hall in 1760 and enlarged it around 1798-99 when the family left the old hall for the new. A family tree of these early Heskeths is traced in WeRelate (see under What Links Here on the left). The information provided is well worth expanding.

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 township and parish of Rufford from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1911