Little Marsden, Lancashire Genealogy

England Lancashire  Lancashire Parishes



Chapelry History
Little Marsden was created as a chapel of ease in 1783 from, and lying within the boundaries of Whalley, Lancashire Ancient Parish.

The Diocese of Blackburn is a Church of England diocese, covering much of Lancashire, created in 1926 from part of the Diocese of Manchester. The Diocese includes the towns of Blackburn, Blackpool, Burnley, and the cities of Lancaster, and Preston, as well as a large part of the Ribble Valley.

The town was originally two villages, Little Marsden and Great Marsden. A small mill had been established by the Ecroyd family at Edge End as early as 1740, and there were two coal mines nearby, but it was the coming of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal in 1796, followed by the East Lancashire Railway in 1849, that spurred its development as an industrial town, with an economy based mainly upon cotton weaving.

"MARSDEN, LITTLE, a chapelry [built in 1813], in the parochial chapelry of Colne, parish of Whalley, union of Burnley, Higher division of the hundred of Blackburn, N. division of Lancashire, 3 miles ( N. N. E.) from Burnley; containing 3171 inhabitants. Little Marsden was anciently in the possession of the Walton family. It comprises by measurement 1200 acres, the whole in pasture. The road from Burnley to Colne, and the Liverpool and Leeds canal, pass through the western portion of the township, nearly in a parallel direction. The chapel existed prior to the Reformation; it was rebuilt in the beginning of the present century, and has since been enlarged: the living is a perpetual curacy; gross income, £150; patrons, the Hulme Trustees."

From: A Topographical Dictionary of England by Samuel Lewis (1848), pp. 260-263. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=51135 Date accessed: 20 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.

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
Include here information for parish registers, Bishop’s Transcripts and other types of church records, such as parish chest records. Add the contact information for the office holding the original records. Add links to the Family History Library Catalog showing the film numbers in their collection

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

Poor Law Unions
Burnley 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
Maps are a visual look at the locations in England. Gazetteers contain brief summaries about a place.


 * England Jurisdictions 1851
 * Vision of Britain

Web sites
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