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Useful Lancashire Resources

R

RosemaryC

LostCousins Member
Lancashire is blessed with wonderful volunteers. If you are researching Lancashire ancestors, then do take a look at Lancashire Online Parish Clerk, which may well have transcriptions of records of births, marriages and deaths of your ancestors - some of these transcribed records go far back before civil registration started.

Also do visit Lancashire BMD to look for records of births, marriages and deaths since civil registration started in 1837. While normally, you can only find the mother's maiden names for births after 1911, the volunteer transcribers at Lancashire BMD are gradually adding in mother's maiden names to earlier entries.
 
As your wife also may have found, Jonathan, there is an extremely helpful online community at the Lancashire boards at Rootsweb.

Requests for information almost always get a speedy and generous response from posters. I first found this site when I was looking for my 'lost' granduncle who had moved over to Lancashire from Ireland, and was astounded when - within minutes of posting my request - I had received five or six replies.
 
RosemaryC said:
As your wife also may have found, Jonathan, there is an extremely helpful online community at the Lancashire boards at Rootsweb.
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Another friendly and helpful group, though with quite a narrow geographical focus, is The Briercliffe Society Forum. It's particularly useful on the Burnley - Nelson area, though topics range much more widely. The Society's main website has a small BMD database from local churches and non-conformist chapels which as it happens has been most valuable to me: also pictures and other local information
 
I agree that there are lots of very helpful Lancashire sites. If anyone is interested in the area around Darwen/Blackburn here are two very useful sites. This is not as the address suggests, just for Nightingale researchers but is a family tree for anyone researching Darwen ancestors. The goal is to create a tree that provides help to anyone researching their Darwen family roots, it grows by the day !!
This is the forum I visit every day and try to help visitors and members alike to research their family trees, it is for anyone that has an interest in Darwen and the surrounding area, during my time on this site I have found that I am related to at least one of the members !
 
For anyone with ancestors in St Helens, the council has a searchable database for their cemetery. St Helens cemetery database. It does suffer from mis-transcriptions so if the name you want is not there, try an alternative spelling. The database not only gives the date of burial and age of the deceased but it also lists every burial in the same grave - very useful for finding family connections.
 
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I've found the following site very helpful for Preston Old Cemetery. They replied promptly and accurately to my query and even offered directions. There is a charge but it is reasonable. Cemsearch have information on other cemeteries in Lancs but I haven't tried those.
 
Thanks so much for that link I have just ordered the follow records for £6. I will let you know how I get on
HESKETH 85 People 39 Other Surnames In 29 Graves A Total Of 178 People
 
Glad it was helpful. I have a little bit of Hesketh ancestry. Margaret, daughter of Thomas from Poulton le Fylde was my 7G grandmother.
 
Well I got the results back by the end of the day. An the moment there are no matches as the burials are a little later than my own set, but I will enter the family in my tree as I am toying with the idea of doing a One Name Study for the Heskeths.
MelT at the moment my links are all south of Preston but I wont be surprised to find we are related. I will let you know if I do the ONS.
 
AdrienneQ said:
MelT at the moment my links are all south of Preston but I wont be surprised to find we are related. I will let you know if I do the ONS.
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I do hope you have added your newly-found link(s) on your LC 'My Ancestors' page - this is just the type of link Peter mentioned: ".....Wouldn't it be great if one of the new relatives Marion has found turns out to be another forum member? Unlikely, I know - but what better way of illustrating the power of the LostCousins!...".

This exercise has brought home to me how important it is to know one's fellow members' areas of family history research - perhaps in our Personal Details we could have two areas - one for a short list of our family research names and the other for locations?
 
Heather said:
I agree that there are lots of very helpful Lancashire sites. If anyone is interested in the area around Darwen/Blackburn here are two very useful siteshttp://www.nightingaletree.tribalpages.com/ This is not as the address suggests, just for Nightingale researchers but is a family tree for anyone researching Darwen ancestors. The goal is to create a tree that provides help to anyone researching their Darwen family roots, it grows by the day !!
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Darwen-roots/ This is the forum I visit every day and try to help visitors and members alike to research their family trees, it is for anyone that has an interest in Darwen and the surrounding area, during my time on this site I have found that I am related to at least one of the members !
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This is my first effort on the forum Heather. The links you provided have helped me solve a few issues. I recently received some images from a second cousin I found in Canada. He inherited glass plate and celluloid negative from his grandfather (my great uncle) and has managed to produce photos from them:). I'm so grateful that he has sent me a disc of the images. They were mostly of a family holiday to I.O.M. in 1911 - my dad is a baby of only about 8 to 12 weeks old in some of the pics.

I have been carrying out on line searches of the I.O.M. attempting to identify as many of the scenes as poss. I've searched and searched for a tower that is labelled : 'castle lighthouse'. Thanks to following the 'nightingale' link and subsequently Darwen ,Google etc.......yes!.... it is the Jubilee Tower. Another, labelled 'working city', is a view from the tower of Darwen, confirmed by the India Mill, (I've been searching images of Manchester for this distinctive chimney).

This has also served to remind me that I have ancestry from the area, a line I've been neglecting, and now of course potential additions for my LC entries. I have spotted some names on the Nightingale tree (Whittaker/Bentley)...thanks.
 
emjay said:
I've searched and searched for a tower that is labelled : 'castle lighthouse'. Thanks to following the 'nightingale' link and subsequently Darwen ,Google etc.......yes!.... it is the Jubilee Tower. Another, labelled 'working city', is a view from the tower of Darwen, confirmed by the India Mill, (I've been searching images of Manchester for this distinctive chimney).
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I'm glad you found the links useful emjay. I was born and raised in Darwen and lived there until I married and moved to Blackburn. The Darwen-roots site has lots of very helpful people on it and if you need help you only have to ask. I know the Darwen Tower very well and have many pictures of it. The India Mill Chimney can be seen from most parts of Darwen and is a well known Darwen landmark. There are two more links that you and others interested in Darwen may like to see, the first is Darwen Days which has hundreds of photos of Darwen and lots more things of interest.
Frederick "Fred" Dibnah MBE (28 April 1938 – 6 November 2004), was a very well known steeplejack who became a television personality when he was approached by the BBC to make a video of his work, he then went on to make lots of DVDs not just of steeplejack work but also demolishing chimneys when they were no longer needed. His dvds cover architecture, monuments, bridges, the industrial age of Britain etc. an amazing man. He climbed the India Mill Chimney and you can see the amazing feat on youtube, Fred Dibnah how to climb a chimney at 50+
 
emjay said:
I have been carrying out on line searches of the I.O.M. attempting to identify as many of the scenes as poss. I've searched and searched for a tower that is labelled : 'castle lighthouse'.
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Just wondering if this could be the Tower of Refuge which is situated in Douglas Bay. It was a rocky island where apparently over the years there were many shipwrecks. There was a public subscription to build a structure to be used as a sanctuary for any unfortunate passengers and crew! It certainly looks like a castle although I'm not sure that there was ever any light there.
If you google "Tower of Refuge" there are lots of pictures so you will be able to identify whether this is what you are looking for.
 
It turns out to be Darwen/Jubilee tower. I had assumed it to be I.O.M. as most of the scenes were from there ,including the Tower of Refuge which I had already identified
and 'read up on', but thanks anyway.
 
I agree that the Lancs OPC site is a great resource... but then I'm biased as I transcribe for it. Do consider doing some transcriptions if you have Lancashire ancestors.
Another fantastic site if your ancestors were from the Toxteth or Anfield areas of Liverpool. The work on Anfield is only just beginning so you may have to be patient.
 
I have recently discovered a website useful for Wigan ancestors. Wiganworld has a searchable database for 6 cemeteries (in the menu on the left of the page)
The grave references contain a list of all burials in that grave, and most entries contain the place of death. The search box has the option of 'names equal to' or 'names beginning with', very useful for those names with various spellings.
 
I run a website which is dedicated to Oswaldtwistle and Church and in particular the many HAWORTH families that lived there - though other families get a mention too! Complete census transcriptions for the HAWORTHS as well as their family histories are to be found there. When I have the time I am working to expand the site include the history of every family in the towns.
 
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I'll have a look. My father's cousin's mother was Ethel Haworth born in Church. Quite a lot of my relations moved to Church and surrounding area from Croston and Leyland in the late 1800s.
 
Susan said:
For anyone with ancestors in St Helens, the council has a searchable database for their cemetery. St Helens cemetery database. It does suffer from mis-transcriptions so if the name you want is not there, try an alternative spelling. The database not only gives the date of burial and age of the deceased but it also lists every burial in the same grave - very useful for finding family connections.
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The link in my previous post no longer works as the website address has changed. Here is a new link St Helens cemetery
 
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