Place:Woolston with Martinscroft, Lancashire, England

Woolston with Martinscroft was a civil parish located in Warrington Rural District from 1894 until 1933. Prior to that it was a township in the ancient parish of Winwick in the West Derby Hundred of Lancashire. There was a boundary change to the civil parish in 1885 when the county boundary between Lancashire and Cheshire was adjusted: the parish gained part of Thelwall civil parish from Cheshire. In 1933 the name of the parish was changed to Woolston and the area covered was expanded to include parts of the parishes of Lymm, Thelwall and Grappenhall, all of which were formerly in Cheshire. The whole of Warrington Rural District was transferred to Warrington Metropolitan Borough in 1974. The metropolitan borough elected to be transferred fully to Cheshire instead of joining either of the neighbouring new counties of Greater Manchester or Merseyside. Warrington has been a unitary authority since 1998. Woolston lies in the east-central part of Warrington, on the north banks of the River Mersey and Manchester Ship Canal, and is bounded on the east by the M6 motorway. Martinscroft remains as an area with the Woolston parish. Woolston with Martinscroft (now Woolston) is a civil parish which grew in the 20th century: the population in 1901 was just 484.

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.
• An Ordnance Survey map of Lancashire circa 1954 supplied by A Vision of Britain through Time
• A description of the township of Woolston with Martinscroft from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1911