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- source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
| :the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia
Stretford has been, since 1974, a town in the Trafford Metropolitan Borough within Greater Manchester, England. It is located on flat ground between the River Mersey and the Manchester Ship Canal, 3.8 miles (6.1 km) southwest of Manchester city centre, 3.0 miles (4.8 km) south of Salford and 4.2 miles (6.8 km) northeast of Altrincham. Stretford borders Chorlton cum Hardy to the east, Urmston to the west, Salford to the north, and Sale to the south. The Bridgewater Canal bisects the town.
Before 1974 it was situated in the county of Lancashire. In the 19th century it was an agricultural village, known locally as "Porkhampton" due to the large number of pigs produced for the Manchester market. It was also an extensive market-gardening area, producing more than 500 long tons (508 t) of vegetables each week for sale in Manchester by 1845. The arrival of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894, and the subsequent development of Trafford Park industrial estate, accelerated the industrialisation that had begun in the late 19th century. By 2001 less than one per cent of Stretford's population was employed in agriculture.
Stretford has been the home of Manchester United Football Club since 1910, and of Lancashire County Cricket Club since 1864. Notable residents have included the industrialist, philanthropist, and Manchester's first multi-millionaire John Rylands, the suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, and the painter L. S. Lowry.
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Municipal Borough of Stretford
- the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia
In 1868 the township of Stretford adopted the Local Government Act 1858, and a "local board" was formed to govern the town. In 1889 the district became part of the administrative county of Lancashire.
The Local Government Act 1894 reconstituted the local board's area as Stretford Urban District. An urban district council of eighteen members replaced the local board. The urban district was divided into six wards: Clifford, Cornbrook, Longford, Stretford, Talbot and Trafford (commonly known as Old Trafford). In 1933 the urban district was enlarged when part of the Davyhulme area was added when the neighbouring Barton-upon-Irwell Rural District was abolished by a county review order.
Stretford Urban District was abolished by the Local Government Act 1972, and its former area transferred to the new county of Greater Manchester in 1974, to form part of the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford.
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).
- "STRETFORD, a township, a chapelry, and a [registration] sub-district, on the S border of Lancashire. The township lies on the Manchester and Altrincham railway, 4 miles SW of Manchester; is in Manchester parish; includes Old Trafford chapelry; contains many handsome villa residences, a public hall, a temperance institute, the Manchester botanic garden, the asylum for the blind, the school for the deaf and dumb, two churches, five dissenting chapels, a Roman Catholic chapel of 1864, and a large national school; and has a [railway]] station with telegraph, and a post-office, designated Stretford, Lancashire. Acres: 3,140. Real property: £42,938; of which £500 are in gasworks. Population in 1851: 4,998; in 1861: 8,757. Houses: 1,668.
- "The chapelry was constituted in 1854. Population: 3,882. Houses: 791. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Manchester. Value: £405. Patrons: the Dean and Chapter of [Manchester]. The church was rebuilt in 1841.
- "The [registration] sub-district comprises [Stretford] township and Flixton parish, and is in Barton-upon-Irwell [registration] district. Acres: 5,689. Population: 10,807. Houses: 2,077."
Trafford Park
- the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia
Trafford Park is an area of the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, in Greater Manchester, England. Located opposite Salford Quays, on the southern side of the Manchester Ship Canal, it is 3.4 miles (5.5 km) west-southwest of Manchester city centre, and 1.3 miles (2.1 km) north of Stretford. Until the late 19th century it was the ancestral home of the Trafford family, who sold it to financier Ernest Terah Hooley in 1896. Occupying an area of 4.7 square miles (12 km2), it was the first planned industrial estate in the world, and remains the largest in Europe.
For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Trafford Park.
Old Trafford
Old Trafford is an area of Stretford within the Trafford borough of Greater Manchester, England. It is 2 miles (3.2 km) southwest of Manchester city centre. The crossroads sites of two old toll gates roughly delineate the borders of the area: Brooks's Bar to the east and Trafford Bar to the west.
Old Trafford was in the Municipal Borough of Stretford, Lancashire until 1974. In 1974, as a result of the Local Government Act 1972, all of Stretford became a part of the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, in Greater Manchester.
Old Trafford is best known as the location of Old Trafford Football Stadium, home of Manchester United Football Club and Old Trafford Cricket Ground, home of Lancashire County Cricket Club.
Firswood
Firswood borders Old Trafford and Chorlton cum Hardy. It was largely occupied by Rye Bank Farm, which remained until 1930, when private housing was built along Rye Bank Road and Warwick Road. The neighbouring Firs Farm was demolished in 1960, and social housing built on the site. Before being drained, the area was largely a peat bog, which explains the lack of development before the 20th century.
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.
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- Trafford Local Studies Centre holds the records of earlier municipalities in the area.
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