Atherton, Lancashire
Historical Description
Atherton, a township and an ecclesiastical parish in the ancient parish of Leigh, Lancashire. The town stands about a mile E of the Bolton and Kenyon railway, 2 miles NNE of Leigh, and 13 WNW of Manchester. Part of the town bears the name of Chowbent, and it has a station of the name of Atherton on the L. & N.W.R., one at Chowbent on the same line, and a third, known as Atherton Central, on the Lancashire and Yorkshire railway, and a post, money order, and telegraph office under Manchester. The inhabitants are employed variously in cotton factories, iron works, nail factories, and collieries. Acreage, 2426; population, 15,833. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Manchester; value, £215 with residence. Patron, Lord Lilford. The church was rebuilt in 1810, partly rebuilt in 1879, and completed in 1893. There are Baptist, Primitive and Independent Methodist, Wesleyan, and Unitarian chapels, Liberal and Conservative clubs, a village club, public hall, a cemetery enlarged in 1888, and several schools.
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 | Leigh | |
Hundred | West Derby | |
Poor Law union | Leigh |
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 Atherton from the following:
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Lancashire is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Atherton 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: