I thought it might be good to have a thread that people can add to when it comes to researching local history topics. By this I specifically mean internet resources. I have found a few very useful places to go when researching a topic. I will list them and hope that as people stumble across new ones they will add them.
Wiki's
Wikipedia
Wikiwirral
This may be useful i reckon lots of wirral stats
A link site to Old maps of Cheshire - note that some use zoomify which gives really good detail.
Antique Cheshire Maps
The BBC asked the public to contribute their memories of World War Two to a website between June 2003 and January 2006. The result is an archive of 47,000 stories and 15,000 images.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/It is not really a research website, but a large collection or stories written by the people who were there, and very interesting to browse.
However the search function is rubbish as it adds +ww2 to every search.
But it is possible to find local Cheshire stories by going to
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/categories/c54613/There are is one for Lancashire
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/categories/c1136/And one for Liverpool.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/categories/c1141/Sorry if this has already been posted somewhere.
Tony
Not sure if this is the correct place for this but if you wanted to look up ancestors births marriages and deaths you can do free online searches here
http://www.cheshirebmd.org.uk/Note that this is only Cheshire. Wirral of course used to be Cheshire when us oldies first came on to the scene.
It is not a complete list and you stand a better chance of finding a relative the further back you go as they are still transcribing. If the person you expect is not there then it is possible that they haven't been included yet or may not have been born, married or died in Cheshire. Perhaps we could have a family history thread or are there too many on the net anyway?
Some more links
http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~cprdb/
births, marriages and burials
http://www.andysutton.co.uk/get old cemetery maps from this
http://www.cheshire.gov.uk/recordoffice/wills/Home.htmfor wills from cheshire to the late 1930's
http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html#p=0this has cheshire christenings, marriages and burials for some churches on the Wirral. If you put in names you may not get a hit, but if you think they may have gone to a specific church like St Peters or St pauls in Birkenhead,( try a common name like Davies,, find the church ) you have to go through each page, but if you know the year you can narrow it down when on that actual church. Takes some getting used to. This site can be slow.....
http://www.upton.cx For History, Information and pictures of Upton (Wirral).
I have the Mi's for St Mary's,Upton. Also St Hilary's, Wallasey, St Bridgets, West Kirby. St Oswald, Bidston.
Also Baptisms,Marriages and burials for Liscard Independent Chapel
These are all on Fiche, if anyone needs a look up. Thought it might help some?
Try the link in my signature for Wallasey History.
Birkenhead Central Reference Library has all the Electoral Registers for Birkenhead going back to 1863, additionally it has Wallasey and rest of WBC since amalgamation with Birkenhead.
hi do you have the marriages for st hillarys 1913 if so does it give you the bride n grooms fathers names thanks sasha
Cheshire board of Rootschat. Quite a lot of Wirral stuff comes up and they can be quite helpful in looking up things if requested.
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/board,6.0.html
For younger people who may not remember, we used to be Cheshire.
For younger people who may not remember, we used to be Cheshire.
Still are as far as I'm concerned
ditto ! As do the counties of Cumberland, Westmorland, The East, North & West Ridings of Yorkshire. etc.etc.
For younger people who may not remember, we used to be Cheshire.
Still are as far as I'm concerned
Me too Chris.
Without wishing to get into an argument, those who still want to be part of Cheshire all seem to have left the area?
Anyway, in case you haven't been back for a while, we are still in the same place despite the Merseyside tag.
It used to be known as Gay glorious New Brighton. Do you want that back or do we accept progress? Most people on the Wirral originated from Liverpool via Ireland/Wales/Outer Mongolia (insert own) anyway.
Viva la difference as the Welsh say!
The original terms of changing to Merseyside from Cheshire was that it was purely an administrative move and was not a social or demographical change (I will try and find the exact wording).
Unfortunately the Royal Mail made the change as well, as our mail and postcode was Liverpool/Merseyside.
Now that we are in Chester/Cheshire for postal purposes, the Royal Mail should allow the postal address to be reverted back to Cheshire.
Its nothing to do with snobbery (some of Cheshire has far worse areas than Liverpool or the Wirral) it is just plain common sense - we are physically attached to Cheshire.
I was born in Birkenhead, Cheshire and to this day use that when asked for my place of birth - I would be lying if I said I was born in Birkenhead, Merseyside.
Snobbery ?? Well that's a laugh and a half. It's nothing whatsoever to do with "snobbery". I was born and brought up in Birkenhead, It's still my "home". I come "home" as often as I can.
If I was born/brought up in the sylvan retreats of Timperley, Alderley or parts of the great Cheshire plain, then I could be viewed (by some) as being snobbish maybe.
No, it was a group of overpaid, braindead suits that decided without any consultation with the public (oh - how dreadful THAT would be) that parts of Lancashire and Cheshire would henceforth be known as Merseyside ! Well sorry, it didn't work with me and countless others. The old tenements of Price Street were in Cheshire, as are the residences of Pine Walks.
Just off for my breakfast, part of which is Cumberland Sausage. Maybe it should be Cumbria Sausage ?? Excuse me whilst I vomit over the society pages of my copy of "Horse & Hound"
As a closing thought, because I and a lot of other regular contributors to wikiwirral no longer live on the Wirral, by virtue of a previous job move or whatever, is that a bar to us putting our 2d's worth in ?? Maybe I missed something in the small print ?
in reality wirral loosely means isle of the welsh
so maybe we should be on a welsh postcode
Wasn't the change from Cheshire to Merseyside done for political reasons namely Sailor boy Heath may he be rotting in hell,decided that turning the Cities to Metro area's would screw Liebour up in the Liebour ghetto's as the right would outnumber the left,lets face it no politician works for the public interest.
Without wishing to get into an argument, those who still want to be part of Cheshire all seem to have left the area?
Nope, I'm still here. I have a CH postcode, not a L postcode. By virtue of this, it is not Merseyside. It was Cheshire when I was born and as far as I'm concerned, it still is.
Even more annoying is that the County of Merseyside was disbanded and they still didn't have the decency to revert us back to Cheshire.
I find it all very bemusing.
I was born in Wallasey, Cheshire and happily grew up in a town called the 'County Borough of Wallasey' run by 'Wallasey Borough Council' out of Wallasey Town Hall. My mailing address was 'Wallasey, Cheshire'. We had our own buses, our own Police Force, the town was pretty neat and clean. What was the problem with this, again? (somebody please remind me?)
Then along comes the "County" of 'Merseyside' and suddenly we're no longer in Cheshire so the Post Office changed our mailing address to 'Wallasey Merseyside'. But apparently, the Post Office also thought that this made us part of Liverpool - and so we got 'L44' for a Post Code... hmmm....!!
OK then they disbanded Mereseyside County Council and so I now understand that my hometown administratively, no longer exists, as it is now run by 'Wirral Borough Council' (which of course, is far better for Wallasey and its residents than when it used to run itself? - yeah right).
Now it's apparently, officially still located in and part of the "County" of 'Merseyside'...
...however, the Post Office now seems to have decided that Wallasey is now once again in Cheshire?? So they changed the Post Code to CHxx (my folks' address now, I understand, is 'Wallasey, Mersyside, CH44 2DH'??)
Is it just me, or has this whole sorry story been complete and utter madness?!? Seems to have all been done purely for Political expediency and so of course, had nothing to do with improving 'anything' for 'anyone' (except, of course, the Politicians I suppose).
Grrrrr!
I can't say I'm really bothered, I'm from Birkenhead and i have enough trouble explaining where that is to all sorts of people around the world, as well as people of Great Britain. It doesn't seem to matter if you throw in Wirral, Cheshire, they mainly cotton on when you say near Liverpool or on the Mersey. Talking to a Yank once and his Knowledge of here was he had heard of Liverpool because of the Beatles. He then asked me "do you know Eric from Bristol", i asked "does he wear a checked coat" He replied "not sure", the mind boggles.
I used to speak to Americans and Japanese quite often as well as nearby European Countries - most of them even knew villages of the Wirral (eg Oxton) and were quite insistent I told them exactly where I was. Cammel Lairds seemed to be better known than Liverpool.
But when speaking to young people in London in was a different matter.
Me too I've met quite a few Americans who know of Wallasey and the Wirral - from Military connections mostly...
in reality wirral loosely means isle of the welsh
so maybe we should be on a welsh postcode
Not true. That applies to Wallasey as it was almost cut off from the rest of the Wirral by the Wallasey pool, Bidston Moss and Irish sea. The CH postcode does indeed include some places in Wales btw.
The only reason postcodes changed was because your mail was dealt with at that sorting office. I.E. When we were L, it was done at Copperas Hill in Liverpool. The Post Office in its wisdom decided that Chester would hence forth sort our mail so we became CH. Those of us in the know, knew this was the thin end of the wedge to eventually close the sorting office at Liverpool and transfer to Warrington which is happening slowly. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Merseyside, Cheshire or Lancashire for that matter. That was down to Governments.
For those of us who remember, and has already been stated by someone, we had Wallasey Borough Council which apart from running what has already been mentioned, was also responsible for providing us with water. A lot of that came from wells that were/are under Asda in Seaview road and was extremely pure. So pure that you could put it in car batteries. The wells became polluted with diesel which I assume was something to do with the bus depot but I am not sure? I digress. Water was paid for as part of your rates until the greedy sods in power decided on private water companies.
There was Birkenhead Borough Council. Hoylake Urban District Council and so on. Basically it was a money saving exercise to combine the lot and call us the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral. Things went downhill from there in my humble but I don't really mind being called Merseyside because I do live on the banks of the Mersey. Up yours Deeside! Only kidding.
I can understand Pinz and Chris still thinking of here as Cheshire, that's what it probably was when they left and old habits die hard and DD would be correct in saying he was born in Cheshire if that's whats on his birth certificate, no harm there, though these days its more important to find a fathers name on the BC than place of birth, (i digress). The only advantage i could see when changing from L to CH was that some insurance company's may not of thought that i go out and steal hub caps or my home was under constant attack from buglers, but i don't think that lasted long before they cottoned on. As Helles said, he can consider being a Merseysider with living on the banks of the Mersey, can i, considering i live in Higher Tranmere or am i to far away, does a person living in Heswall consider themselves a Deesider. Would this mean someone living in Meols consider themselves an Irish seasider. It doesn't matter what post code we have or area we are deemed to live under, we still in the most part live with the same decent people.
sorry i actualy meant to type wallasey not wirral
i was born in birkenhead ,there was never a mention then of living on the wirral. they say that the rovers are wirrals football club nonsense they are birkenheads football club .iff you was born in birkenhead be proud to say so.
that i go out and steal hub caps or my home was under constant attack from buglers,
Bert
I hope you are ok as those buglers can do some damage with the blunt end of their bugles
...band of nasty buglers....
'County of Merseyside' just doesn't sound right.
I was born in Birkenhead, Cheshire and lived in Bebington, Cheshire.
Can't change that! Wouldn't want to change that!
I still feel 'connected', by good old WikiWirral, covering the geographical peninsula called Wirral.
Bri
Hi digging can you access that online? I tried to get a library card so I could search their reference library but they would not let me.
that i go out and steal hub caps or my home was under constant attack from buglers,
Bert
I hope you are ok as those buglers can do some damage with the blunt end of their bugles
Silly me Derek, people who live in glass houses,
