Haverthwaite, Lancashire Genealogy

England Lancashire  Lancashire Parishes



Chapelry History
Haverthwaite St Anne was created a chapelry in 1826, lying within the boundaries of Cartmel and Colton, Lancashire parishes. Haverthwaite village proper was in Colton parish, and the (district) chapelry crossed into both Colton and Cartmel parishes, Lancashire.

Haverthwaite is a small village since 1974 in the Furness region of Cumbria (historically Lancashire). It is also within the boundaries of the Lake District National Park. It is located several miles east of Ulverston and is near the southern end of Windermere. The village gets part of its name from the Old Norse word thwaite which usually refers to a clearing or settlement in the forest.

In the 18th century there were two iron furnaces near the village, one at Backbarrow and the other at Low Wood. The furnace at Backbarrow was supplied from 1711 with iron ore from Low Furness which would have arrived at the quays in Haverthwaite and been transported to Backbarrow by horse and cart. In 1860 the Furness Railway opened its branch line that ran from Ulverston to Lakeside and almost overnight the quays fell into disuse.

In 1798 a gunpowder works, Low Wood, was established and continued production until 1935. The nearby river Leven was used to transport the finished product.

The vicarage was demolished in the 1970s to make way for the new route of the A590. St Anne's Church was originally a chapel under Colton; it was consecrated in 1825 and extended in 1838. When it was built, it received a grant on condition that 200 sittings were to be 'free and unappropriated for ever'. the modern parish is in the Diocese of Carlisle.

"HAVERTHWAITE, a district chapelry, in the parish of Coulton, union of Ulverston, hundred of Lonsdale north of the Sands, N. division of the county of Lancaster, 5 miles (N. E.) from Ulverston. The village is situated a short distance north of the river Leven, and on the road from Ulverston to Kendal. At Backbarrow, in the chapelry, are cotton-works employing about 340 persons, and at Low-Wood are powderworks in which upwards of 60 are engaged; there are also small iron-works, and works for the preparation of acids, and stone-quarries are numerous, the material of which is used principally for building. The living is a perpetual curacy; net income, £52; patron, the Incumbent of Coulton. The chapel is a neat and commodious building, erected in 1826. The grammar school at Brow-Edge has an income of about £80."

From: A Topographical Dictionary of England by Samuel Lewis (1848), pp. 447-450. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=51016 Date accessed: 01 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.

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

Poor Law Unions
Ulverston 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
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 * England Jurisdictions 1851
 * Vision of Britain

Web sites
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