Place:Bacup, Lancashire, England

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source: Family History Library Catalog

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Bacup (pronounced "bake-up") is a town within the Rossendale borough of Lancashire, England. It is located amongst the South Pennines, along Lancashire's eastern boundary with West Yorkshire. The town sits within a rural setting in the Forest of Rossendale, amongst the steep-sided upper-Irwell Valley, through which the River Irwell passes. It is east of Rawtenstall, north of Rochdale, and east of Preston. At the time of the UK census of 2011, Bacup—-which encompasses the outlying communities of Britannia, Stacksteads, Rockcliffe, Trough Gate and Weir (all re-directed here)—had a population of 13,323. Bacup emerged as a settlement following the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain in the Early Middle Ages. For centuries, Bacup was a small and obscure centre of domestic flannel and woollen cloth production, and many of the original weavers' cottages survive today as listed buildings. Following the Industrial Revolution Bacup became a mill town, its landscape dominated by distinctive and large rectangular woollen and cotton mills. Bacup received a charter of incorporation in 1882, giving it municipal borough status and its own elected town government, consisting of a mayor, aldermen and councillors to oversee local affairs. In the nationwide local administration reorganization of 1974 Bacup became part of the borough of Rossendale in Lancashire.

For code for numbered places, see the page for Burnley Rural District.

Governance

Lying within the historic county of Lancashire since the High Middle Ages, Bacup was a chapelry linked with both the ancient parishes of Whalley in Leyland Hundred and Rochdale in Blackburn Hundred. It also formed parts of the townships of Newchurch in Rossendale in Whalley and Spotland in Rochdale.

Bacup was made a municipal borough in 1894. In 1901 it had a population of 22,505.

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). It gives a picture of the town before it became a municipal borough.

"BACOP, or Bacup, a town and three chapelries in Whalley and Rochdale parishes, Lancashire. The town stands on the river Irwell, at the terminus of a branch of the Lancashire and Yorkshire railway, 7 miles NNW of Rochdale; is a seat of petty sessions and county courts; and carries on industry in cotton factories, woollen print works, Turkey-red dye-works, iron foundries, corn mills, and coal mining; has been much improved, by a local board, since 1864; and has a post office‡ under Manchester, a [[railway] station with telegraph, a banking office, a police station, waterworks, a market-hall of 1867 built at a cost of £6,000, a plain church of 1788, two churches of 1854 and 1865 in the early English style, two recent handsome Wesleyan chapels, seven other dissenting chapels, a Roman Catholic chapel, a mechanics institution, with public hall and reading rooms, several public schools, a weekly market on Saturday, and two annual pleasure fairs. Population in 1851: 6,981; in 1861: 10,935. Houses: 2,085. The chapelries are St. John, Christchurch, and St. Saviour. Population: 6,981, 5,730, and 2,350 [respectively]. The livings of St. [John] and [Christchurch] are vicarages, and that of St. [Saviour]. is a [perpetual] curacy, in the [diocese] of Manchester. Value of St. [John] and [Christchurch]: each £300; of St. [Saviour]: £159. Patrons of St. [John]: Hulme's Trustees; of [Christchurch]: Five Trustees; of St. [Saviour]: J. M. Holt, Esq."

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 Newchurch in Rossendale, the predecessor of Bacup from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1911