Worsley, Lancashire
Historical Description
Worsley, a village, a township, andjan ecclesiastical parish, in Eccles parish, Lancashire. The village stands on the Bridgwater Canal, and on the Manchester, Tyidesley, and Wigan branch of the L. & N.W.R., 6½ miles WNW of Manchester, with a post, money order, and telegraph office under Manchester, a railway station, a modern court-house for petty sessions, a literary institution, and several schools. The township includes the hamlets of Boothstown, Ellenbrook, Hazlehurst, Roe Green, and Whittlebrook, and Swinton ecclesiastical parish. It carries on cotton manufacture, iron-working, brick-making, and extensive coal-mining, and has two churches, two mission rooms, several dissenting chapels, and the Manchester Industrial Schools at Swinton. Acreage, 6928, of which 48 are water; population, 26,290. The manor was known at the Norman Conquest as Workedesly, belonged then to Elias de Workedesly, came to the Duke of Bridg-water, and, with Worsley Hall, belongs now to the Earl of Ellesmere. The hall was built in 1840-46 after designs by Blore, is in a florid variety of the Tudor style, was visited by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1851, by the Queen again in 1857, by the Prince of Wales in 1869, and commands an extensive view. A memorial column to the first Earl of Ellesmere crowns an adjacent height. Worsley chapelry was made ecclesiastically parochial in 1847. Population, 4563. The living is a vicarage, with Ellenbrook annexed, in the diocese of Manchester; gross value, £630 with residence. Patron, the Earl of Ellesmere. The church, erected in 1846, is in the Decorated English style, and consists of chancel, nave, aisles, S porch, and tower with spire.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
Ancient County | Lancashire | |
Civil parish | Eccles | |
Hundred | Salford |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Church Records
Ancestry.co.uk, in association with Lancashire Archives, have images of the Parish Registers for Lancashire online.
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Worsley from the following:
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Lancashire is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Worsley are available from a number of sites:
- Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- Google Streetview.
- National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
- OpenStreetMap.
- old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
- Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)
Newspapers and Periodicals
The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Lancashire newspapers online: