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The Rossendale branch is the founder member of The Lancashire
Family History and Heraldry Society, being formed in 1973 as The
Rossendale Society for Genealogy & Heraldry and holding its
inaugural meeting on Saturday 28th April 1973 at The Trevalyan Club,
Broad Street, Bury, Lancashire. Monthly meetings were also held
every month at The Bishop Blaize Hotel, Burnley Road, Rawtenstall.
When the Society adopted its present title on 1st January 1985 it
was decided that the Rawtenstall group should become the Rossendale
Branch and the Rawtenstall meeting transferred to its present
meeting place - Longholme Methodist Church, Bacup Road, Rawtenstall,
were it meets on the first Wednesday of each month at 7-30pm.
The Area covered
The area as a whole is called the Forest of Rossendale and is
situated in north east Lancashire, eighteen mile north of
Manchester. For many hundreds of years the area was a Royal hunting
forest until in 1507 King Henry VII decreed that the area should be
deforested (opened up for settlements and cultivation). The three
towns which sprang up are, from west to east, Haslingden,
Rawtenstall and Bacup. The three towns themselves had many small
districts within them and these included areas such as Higher and
Lower Booths, Newchurch, Lumb, Waterfoot and Cowpe in Rawtenstall -
Helmshore, Musbury, Grane Valley, Stonefold, Ewood Bridge and Irwell
Vale in Haslingden - Stacksteads, Tunstead, Sharnyford, Britannia,
Brandwood and Weir in Bacup.
Until 1974 the three towns had their own Municipal Borough
Councils. In the local government reorganization of 1974 they merged
together along with Whitworth and the Edenfield and Stubbins parts
of Ramsbottom to form the Borough of Rossendale.
With the introduction of Civil Registration in 1837 the three
towns came under the Haslingden Registration district with
sub-offices at Rawtenstall and Bacup. In 1974 the registration
district was changed to the Hyndburn & Rossendale Registration
District with the Superintendent Registrars Office located at Willow
Street, Accrington and all the early records were kept at Accrington
until May 2005, when all the local registration districts were
merged to create The Lancashire Registration District. All records
are now located at the Lancashire Registration District office at
Preston. |
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Rossendale, from time immemorial has been a favourite
hunting-ground: and there are doubtless, still to be found in the
forest sportsmen as stout of heart and lithe of limb as ever cleared
dyke or ditch in the blythe days of yore: but alas, the quality of
the sportsman's game has woefully degenerated from its pristine
excellence. Gone from within its bound is that right royal brute,
the stag; the wild boar, the badger and the wolf have given place to
civilization which tolerates not their existance: even the wily fox
has disappeared from its hill-sides, and no thrifty housewife now
laments her spoliated hen roost. |
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