Heywood, Lancashire Genealogy

England Lancashire  Lancashire Parishes

Chapelry History
HEYWOOD, a town and chapelry, in the township of Heap, parish and union of Bury, hundred of Salford, S. division of the county of Lancaster, 3 miles (E. S. E.) from Bury, on the road to Rochdale. Heywood, in the Saxon, denotes the site of a wood in a field, or a wood surrounded by fields; a family of the same name resided here for many generations. In the 15th century the place consisted of a few cottages, and at the period when the cotton manufacture began to prevail, it still formed a group of rural dwellings: the first spinning-mill commenced in its precincts was at Wrigley Brook, in the latter part of the last century, but the extraordinary growth of the cotton-trade at Heywood is of recent date. In 1845 there were thirtysix cotton-mills in the town, all, with one exception, for heavy fustian goods, and in which 129,936 throstles, 203,066 mule-spindles, and 5320 looms were in operation; the whole manufacturing annually 8506 tons of cotton, and consuming 71,101 tons of coal: in these mills and in two paper-mills, 7510 persons were employed. There are five shops for supplying machinery. The Heywood Coal Company, of recent establishment, has two collieries producing abundance of coal; and a stone-quarry is also wrought. The river Roche separates this vicinity from Birtle and Bury, the surface rising on both sides of the river; and the benefit of inland navigation is derived from a branch canal, which meets the Rochdale canal at Blue Pits. The Manchester and Leeds railway passes on the east, and has a branch leading, through Heywood, to Bury. In 1846 an act was passed for better supplying the town with water: it is supplied with gas by a local company. Petty-sessions are held every second Wednesday; and fairs take place on the first Friday in April, on the Friday before the first Sunday in August, and on the Friday after the 1st of October. The living is a perpetual curacy, in the patronage of the Rector of Bury, with a net income of £196. The chapel, dedicated to St. Luke, was built in 1611, and enlarged in 1806. There are places of worship for dissenters; and good national schools.

From: A Topographical Dictionary of England by Samuel Lewis (1848), pp. 501-505. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=51029 Date accessed: 01 July 2010.

Civil Registration
Birth, marriages and deaths were kept by the government, from July 1837 to the present day. The civil registration article tells more about these records. There are several Internet sites with name lists or indexes. A popular site is FreeBMD.

Church records
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Census records
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http://www.1881pubs.com/ for details of public houses in the 1881 census

Poor Law Unions
Bury_Poor_Law_Union,_Lancashire

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Lancashire Probate Records to find the name of the court having primary jurisdiction. Scroll down in the article to the section Court Jurisdictions by Parish.

Maps and Gazetteers
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 * England Jurisdictions 1851
 * Vision of Britain

Web sites
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