Happy Lancashire Day

threespires said:
Yes the Local Government Act of 1929 did two things, reformed the Poor Laws so that responsibility for 'relief of the poor' aligned directly to local authority areas rather than separate Poor Law Union areas and the other thing it did was allow for boundary changes to create more effective local government. So in 1931 Northenden essentially got scooped up as part of the changes that brought Wythenshawe fully into Manchester. Originally when Manchester wanted to purchase land south of the Mersey for overspill to relieve the urban squalor it couldn't afford it but in 1926 Ernest and Shena Lewis bought Wythenshawe Hall and the surrounding land and gifted it to the council which was then able to afford to put in compulsory purchase orders to build the rest of the estate. So when the 1929 Act provided the means to redraw the boundaries it was a bit of a no brainer for Cheshire to transfer full control of Wythenshawe to Manchester. Despite the misgivings of some Northenden residents it made geographic sense for Manchester, which was keen to create as much overspill capacity as possible, to absorb Northenden too at the same time.
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Excellent local history. Thanks.
 
KS55 said:
Northenden where I was brought up was also in Cheshire until, I think, the 1930s. The Mersey was the original border.
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The Mersey was the long-standing historical border between counties county going back a long way.

At the time of the Domesday Book, before Lancashire existed, what is Southern Lancashire and a lot of Greater Manchester now was part of a county called Inter Ripam et Mersham which translates to ‘Between Ribble and Mersey’. What is Northern Lancashire now was just part of Yorkshire.

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Inter Ripam et Mersham was made up of the Hundreds: Salford, Warrington, Newton, West Derby, Leyland and Blackburn. It had varied between Danish territory, part of Mercia or part of Northumbria.


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(‘Derby’ here means Liverpool, as in, not Derby in Derbyshire but West Derby even sometimes called West Derbyshire.)

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Even the Danelaw is often split on maps by the Mersey.

Pre-Anglo-Saxon times, it was a region of the Setantii people who were a branch of the Brigantes… again, the Mersey appears to the the border on many maps.

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I’ve never known Manchester itself not in Greater Manchester. Therefore, I don’t consider Manchester as Lancashire anymore than I do it as the Salford Hundred, Inter Ripam et Mersham, the Danelaw, Mercia, Northumbria or Setantii… Lancashire just being one of the many old regions it used to be in and Manchester being more important now as its own city county.

Yet strangely - as someone who grew up in Timperley and currently live in Baguley, both previously in the Bucklow Hundred of Cheshire - I’ve always supported Lancashire in the rugby league Wars of the Roses matches with Yorkshire (as @threespires mentioned might be coming back, which is a good thing… even though there isn’t a single RL team in the county of Lancashire in the top eight leagues of the RL system) and Lancashire in the cricket.
 
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