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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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