Place:Wardle, Lancashire, England

NOTE: See also Hundersfield for the original township which covered this area and others surrounding it.

the text in this article is based on one in Wikipedia Since 1974 Wardle (population 7,092, UK census of 2001) is a village within the Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale, in Greater Manchester, England. It lies amongst the foothills of the South Pennines, 1.8 miles (2.9 km) east-southeast of Whitworth, 2.5 miles (4 km) north-northwest of Rochdale and 12 miles (19 km) north-northeast of the city of Manchester. Wardle, which was previously in Lancashire, is now the most northerly settlement in Greater Manchester, and encompasses areas of the neighbourhoods of Smallbridge and Dearnley (both re-directed here) which are usually thought to be part of Rochdale. During the Middle Ages Wardle was a small centre of domestic flannel and woollen cloth production, and many of the original weavers' cottages survive today as listed buildings. [edit] Governance Lying within the historic county boundaries of Lancashire since the early 12th century, Wardle was anciently linked with the area named "Wuerdle", and lay within the township of Hundersfield and the ancient parish of Rochdale. Wuerdle with Wardle would later split from Hundersfield to form a township of itself, still within the parish of Rochdale and in the hundred of Salford.

Wardle's first local governing body was a local board of health established in 1874 which was responsible for standards of hygiene and sanitation in the township. In 1879 part of the neighbouring township of Butterworth was included in the area of this local board. Under the Local Government Act 1894, the area of the local board was renamed Wardle Urban District, a local government district in the Rochdale Poor Law Union. Part of the Milnrow Urban District was added to it in the same year.

Wardle Urban District existed until 1974 when, under the Local Government Act 1972, it was abolished. Since then it has formed an unparished area within the Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale, in the Metropolitan county of Greater Manchester.

Wuerdle with Wardle

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Wuerdle with Wardle from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:

"WUERDLE-WITH-WARDLE, a township in Rochdale parish, Lancashire; on the Rochdale canal and the Manchester and Leeds railway, 2 miles NE of Rochdale. It contains Smallbridge and Wardle villages, with post-offices under Rochdale, Hamer village suburban to Rochdale, and one or two other villages; includes Smallbridge and Wardle chapelries; carries on cotton manufacture in numerous mills; and has two churches, five dissenting chapels, and two national schools. Real property: £26,308; of which £3,036 are in mines, and £150 in quarries. Population in 1851: 7,855; in 1861: 8,201. Houses: 1,720."

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 Wuerdale and Wardle from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1911