Place:Urswick, Lancashire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia The villages of Great Urswick and Little Urswick, together forming the civil parish of Urswick (#29 on the map), are located, since 1974, in the Furness peninsula in Cumbria, England. They are situated to the southeast of the town of Ulverston. Prior to 1974 Ulswick was located in the county of Lancashire. Great Urswick is situated along the north and west sides of Urswick Tarn, a modest body of water (c. 1100 feet by 600), although the largest such natural body in Low Furness. The tarn is fed from the surrounding hills and feeds Gleaston Beck to the south, the water is said to have a red hue due to the iron content of the surrounding land. Little Urswick, the smaller of the two settlements, stands further south on the lower slopes of a limestone outcrop known as Bolton Heads. In the 12th century, Great Urswick became part of the manor of Muchland, whilst Little Urswick remained within the Liberty of Furness belonging to Stephen of Blois who later granted it to Furness Abbey. The Abbey also claimed rights to the already ancient St Mary's Church, which led to a long running dispute with the lords of Muchland, finally settled in the Abbey's favour. In the 13th century Little Urswick was part of an exchange of land between the Abbey and Muchland and was ceded to the latter. In the 19th century and earlier, Urswick was a ancient parish but had no townships other than itself. However, it had four "divisions" in the 18th century: Stainton with Adgarley; Little Urswick, Bolton, Bolton Heads and Beckside; Great Urswick; Bardsea. Stainton was then a 'village,' considered to belong to Leece in Aldingham. Nowadays, Urswick has largely become a commuter village for the towns of Ulverston and Barrow in Furness. However, agriculture also remains important, with the villages surrounded by farms. The parish has a population of 1,397 in the UK census of 2011.

For code for numbered places, see the page for Ulverston Rural District. The smaller urban disticts are Ulverston and Grange over Sands

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).

"URSWICK, a parish, with four townships, in Ulverston district, Lancashire; 3 miles SSW of Ulverston [raiway] station. Post town, Ulverston. Acres: 4,100. Real property: £8,650; of which £400 are in mines. Population in 1851: 891; in 1861: 1,080. Houses: 215. The property is much subdivided. Roman coins have been found. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Carlisle. Value: £300. Patrons: the Landowners. The church was recently restored. The [perpetual] curacy of Bardsea is a separate benefice. There are an endowed school with £15 a year, and charities £23."

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 of Urswick from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1914