Place:Wardleworth, Lancashire, England

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NameWardleworth
Alt namesBuckleysource: large settlement in parish
Crankey Shawsource: hamlet in parish
Hamer Foldsource: hamlet in parish
TypeTownship, Parish
Coordinates53.628°N 2.153°W
Located inLancashire, England     ( - 1894)
See alsoSalford Hundred, Lancashire, Englandhundred in which it was located
Rochdale, Lancashire, Englandancient parish in which it was located
Rochdale, Lancashire, Englandcounty borough into which it was absorbed
Rochdale (metropolitan borough), Greater Manchester, Englandmetropolitan borough covering the area since 1974
The following description of Wardleworth is from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72 and is provided by the website A Vision of Britain Through Time (University of Portsmouth Department of Geography).
"WARDLEWORTH, a township in Rochdale parish, Lancashire; including large part of Rochdale borough. Real property: £61,924; of which £1,060 are in mines, and £559 in gasworks. Population in 1851: 14,103; in 1861: 17,840. Houses: 3,534. Pop. of the [Rochdale] borough part in 1861: 16,531. Houses: 3,272. See Hundersfield."

Wilson's Gazetteer describes Wardleworth in its heyday. It was a civil parish between 1866 and 1894 when it was absorbed into Rochdale. Its main settlement was Buckley, described below. Other settlements were the hamlets of Crankey Shaw and Hamer Fold.

Buckley

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Since 1974 Buckley has been a suburb within the Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale, in Greater Manchester, England. Prior to 1974 the area was in Lancashire, England.

It lies at the northern fringe of Rochdale, along the course of Buckley Brook, "upon an eminence of ground" by the South Pennines. It is 1.2 miles (1.9 km) south-southwest of the village of Wardle and 1.3 miles (2.1 km) north-northeast of Rochdale's town centre. The area of Buckley covers a watercourse, a prison, farmland and residential properties.

Image:Rochdale reduced B.png

Buckley emerged as a constituent community of the manor of Hundersfield following the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain. Although the name Buckley is of Old English derivation, the settlement's medieval history is tied closely to a Norman family who were granted the estate as a gift for their services given in the Norman conquest of England; they subsequently adopted the surname 'de Buckley'. Members of the Buckleys of Buckley family appear throughout the High Middle Ages in legal charters related to Buckley, the surrounding area, and its manor house Buckley Hall.

Throughout the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, Buckley was the principal estate of the township of Wardleworth. The Buckleys of Buckley Hall continued to hold positions of regional importance, such as priests, gentry and military officers, but their size and influence diminished through death and migration prompted the obsolescence of the Buckley estate. Industrialisation resulted in the neighbouring town of Rochdale to encroach on Buckley; the area was absorbed into the Municipal Borough of Rochdale in the 1870s.

Although continuously occupied and revamped during the 18th and 19th centuries, Buckley Hall became unoccupied in the 1880s. The Brothers of Charity, an institute of the Catholic Church, successfully agitated for the purchase of Buckley Hall and its conversion into an orphanage for Catholic boys. The orphanage was operational from 1888 until 1947. The original building was demolished in the early-1990s and HM Prison Buckley Hall was opened in its place.

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.
  • A description of the township of Wardleworth from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1907
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Buckley, Greater Manchester. 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.
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Wardleworth. 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.