Astley, Lancashire Genealogy

England Lancashire  Lancashire Parishes

Chapelry History
ASTLEY, a district chapelry, in the parish and union of Leigh, hundred of West Derby, S. division of Lancashire, 3 miles (E.) from the town of Leigh; containing 2011 inhabitants. This township comprises about 2620 acres; 900 are uncultivated moss, and of the remainder about one-fifth is in tillage. The land lies low, and the principal drainage is from north to south to the brook running east and west from the adjoining township of Worsley; the soil of about 1500 acres is or has been a peat moss, and that of the remainder is chiefly a clayey loam. A colliery producing excellent engine-coal was lately established, on an extensive scale; Messrs. Arrowsmith, cotton-spinners, have a mill here, and there is a considerable number of silk-weavers by hand. The Liverpool and Manchester railway runs over part of Chat Moss in the southern district of the township; the Duke of Bridgewater's canal passes through the centre of the township, and the road from Manchester to Leigh through the northern part. Astley Hall, or Damhouse, situated in the township of Tyldesley, but on the borders of that of Astley, was built in 1650 by Adam Mort, from whom it has passed to his descendant and present representative, Mrs. Ross, lady of Col. Malcolm Nugent Ross, who has greatly enlarged the mansion. Of Morley Hall, the seat of a branch of the Tyldesleys, but little is now remaining, it having been converted into a farmhouse and rebuilt. The living is a perpetual curacy, in the gift of the Vicar of Leigh; incumbent, the Rev. Alfred Hewlett; net income, £250, with a house erected about 1703 by Thomas Mort, whose ancestors had founded the chapel and school of Astley in the preceding century. The chapel was rebuilt in 1760; a tower was added in 1842, and a new north aisle in 1847. There is a place of worship for Wesleyans. Besides the school founded by the Mort family, and which is free for 24 children, national schools have been established for boys and girls; also an infants' school in connexion with the Church, and a school belonging to the Wesleyans.

From: A Topographical Dictionary of England by Samuel Lewis (1848), pp. 100-104. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=50767 Date accessed: 25 June 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.

Online index of Lancashire Births, Marriages and Deaths Lancashire_BMD

Lancashire Online Parish Clerks
An extremely useful resource for research in Lancashire Parishes http://www.lan-opc.org.uk/

Church records
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Census records
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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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