Leigh
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LEIGH, a town, a township, a parish, a sub-district, and a district, in Lancashire. The town stands on the Leigh and Wigan canal, on a loop-line of railway, from Tyldesley to Bradshaw-Leach, and near the Bolton and Kenyon branch of the Northwestern railway, 7¼ miles SW by S of Bolton; comprises portions of West Leigh, Pennington, Bedford, and Atherton townships; has undergone much improvement, under the Local Government act of 1858, and under the Public Works Manufacturing Districts act of 1863; is a seat of petty sessions and county courts, and a polling place; publishes a weekly newspaper; and has a post office under Manchester, two railway stations with telegraph, a bankingoffice, a market-place, a town hall, gas-works, three churches, four dissenting chapels, a Roman Catholic chapel, a grammar school, two national schools, a British school, a public cemetery, and charities £339. There are large cotton factories, foundries, malting establishments, two breweries, and three corn mills. Pop. of the town in 1851, 5,206; in 1861, 10,621. Houses, 2,098. Pop. in 1851, of the West Leigh portion, 838; of the Pennington portion, 4,496; of the Bedford portion, 4,885.

John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72) more...

Archives and Libraries

The Local History Library, Leigh Library, Market Place, Leigh, Lancs WN7 1DY - Tel: 01942 404559

Leigh library have a couple of film readers, a couple of fiche readers and a helpful local historian. I would advise booking in advance. They also carry electoral rolls and local history books of the area.

Cemeteries

Census

Details about the census records, and indexes for Leigh.

Church History

Church Records

You can also perform a more selective search for churches in the Leigh area that are recorded in the GENUKI church database. This will also help identify churches in nearby townships and/or parishes. You also have the option to see the location of the churches marked on a map.

If you keep this page loaded for a very long time and the database is updated since loading it, the church links above may become stale and may display the wrong church. If this happens, reloading this page will correct them.

Civil Registration

The Register Office covering the Leigh area is Wigan and Leigh.

Description and Travel

You can see pictures in an area centred on OS grid reference SD638022 (Lat/Lon: 53.514982, -2.545983) which are provided by:

Gazetteers

Ask for the gazetteer for a calculation of the distance from Leigh to another place.

Genealogy

ENG-LAN-LEIGH is an e-mail list for Leigh genealogy.

Historical Geography

In 1835 the parish of Leigh contained the townships of Atherton, Tyldesley with Shakerley, Westleigh, Pennington, Bedford and Astley.

Information about boundaries and administrative areas is available from A Vision of Britain through time.

Maps

View maps of Leigh and places within its boundaries.

You can see maps centred on OS grid reference SD638022 (Lat/Lon: 53.514982, -2.545983), which are provided by:

Poor Houses, Poor law etc.

Poor Law records held at Wigan Archives.

The Workhouse site has an interesting description of Leigh workhouse.

Probate Records

For probate purposes prior to 1858, Leigh was in the Archdeaconry of Chester, in the Diocese of Chester. The original Lancashire wills for the Archdeaconry of Chester are held at the Lancashire Record Office.

Societies

You can also see Family History Societies covering the nearby area, plotted on a map. This facility is being developed, and is awaiting societies to enter information about the places they cover.