Place:Parr, Lancashire, England

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NameParr
TypeParish
Coordinates53.451°N 2.715°W
Located inLancashire, England     ( - 1974)
See alsoWest Derby Hundred, Lancashire, Englandhundred in which it was located
Prescot, Lancashire, Englandancient parish in which it was located
St. Helens, Lancashire, Englandcounty borough of which it was part 1868-1974
St. Helens (metropolitan borough), Merseyside, Englandmetropolitan borough in which it has been located since 1974
source: Family History Library Catalog
:the following article is based on one in Wikipedia

Parr is a former village, now situated within St. Helens in Merseyside, England and prior to 1974 in the County Borough of St. Helens in Lancashire, England. It is located towards the eastern side of the town. The history of the area can be traced back to the 12th century and the era of the West Derby hundred. Parr was a township in the ancient parish of Prescot.

The area is located within a distance of approximately half a mile of St Helens town centre.

History

In the mid 14th century, the manor of Parr was held by William Dacre, 2nd Baron Dacre.

Parr was one of four townships that joined together, for administrative purposes, to become St. Helens, the others being Sutton, Eccleston and Windle.

The Sankey Canal, also known as the Sankey Brook Navigation and St Helens Canal, flows through Parr. When opened in 1757, it ran from close to the mouth of Sankey Brook at the River Mersey along the valley of the Sankey Brook, ending northeast of St Helens. Later extensions were made at the Mersey end, firstly to Fiddlers Ferry, then to Widnes, and at the northern end, where it was extended into what became the centre of St Helens.

Parr has a historical link to the Parr family, most famously represented by Henry VIII's final wife Catherine Parr. Her father Sir Thomas Parr is known to have owned or rented lands in the area. The family seat was Parr Hall.

Image:St. Helens D.png

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 Parr from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1911
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Parr, St Helens. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.