Tatham History:
External Web Resources

 

This page provides links to free information about Tatham history elsewhere on the web.
Please contact us if you know of others.

 

General

Vision of Britain
This includes some basic details of everywhere in Britain, organised by ‘administrative units’. Tatham is easy to find using the search engine, but you will need to type ‘Wray with Botton’ rather than Wray. The ‘Expert Search’ at the bottom of the page provides a fuller search.

British History Online
A treasure trove of historical sources, created by the Institute of Historical Research. This includes the full text for the parish of Tatham from the Victoria County History of Lancaster vol. 8 (1914).

Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire
The Society had digitised its entire run of journals from the 1840s to 2000.  These include articles on all aspects of Lancashire history and can be searched by author, subject, issue etc.

 

History on Local Websites

Melling with Wrayton Parish
Yorkshire Dales Community Archive

 

The Built Environment

National Heritage List for England
The only official and up-to-date database of all nationally designated heritage assets, including:

  • Listed buildings
  • Scheduled monuments
  • Protected wreck sites
  • Registered parks and gardens
  • Registered battlefields
  • World Heritage Sites
  • Applications for Certificates of Immunity (COIs)
  • Current Building Preservation Notices (BPNs)

Listed Buildings in Tatham
The listed houses, barns and other structures (including Lowgill phone box) with full descriptions, maps, Google Street View, and air photos. Each also has a photo gallery; most galleries are empty at present, but the website has a simple facility for adding them. Botton Head appears in the section on Wray-with-Botton, and the Cross of Greet under Easington.

Images of England - Tatham
This is a "point in time" photographic library of England’s listed buildings. The Tatham photos were taken 2004-2007 - mostly on dull winter days - and are generally unflattering. A simple search on "Tatham" includes a number of "non-Tatham" items at the start and end; scroll down to get to the first genuine Tatham photo.
Click here for Wray-with-Botton.

Dry Stone Walls
The Dry Stone Walling Association is creating a photographic archive on-line, starting with North-West England.
It includes some examples in Tatham.

       

Photo of Lowgill Phone box


19th Century Local Newspapers on-line

If you are a ticket holder for Lancashire Libraries, you can access the British Library Newspapers site which now contains the entire contents of the Lancaster Gazette from 1801-94, searchable by word. (Other newspapers of local interest are Liverpool Mercury, Preston Chronicle, Manchester Times and Leeds Mercury).

Click here for detailed instructions on using the facility.

Aerial Photography

Historic England has an on-line archive of aerial photos which can be accessed through a map interface; you zoom into your area of interest and icons show what’s available. Some of the photos are historic (purple diamonds). Others (red circles) are more recent but include features of historic interest, though it’s left to the viewer to work out what they are! Sadly there is – as yet – virtually no coverage of Tatham, just 3 purple diamonds in Wennington which are 1932 photos including the station area.

Beyond Tatham there are a number of aerials of Bentham. And once started, your mouse is sure to wander to other places of interest to you.

Click here to visit the Aerial Photo Explorer

Old Maps

Lakes Guide Maps
Don't be misled by the name; this amazing collection also covers Lancashire, Yorkshire, Northumberland and Durham (click Adjacent Counties in the left-hand column, then scroll down to find Lancashire) and includes many fascinating maps not available elsewhere on the web.

Old Maps Online
So much available here that summary is impossible, so you'll have to look for yourself!

Ordnance Survey Maps of Great Britain, 1842-1952
This is a fantastic resource from the National Library of Scotland: a well-designed, easy-to-use website, giving free access to very high quality reproductions of the following OS map series:

  • Ordnance Survey, Six-Inch, England and Wales - 1842-1952 - 37,390 sheets
  • Ordnance Survey, 1:25,000 maps of Great Britain - 1937-1961 - 2,027 sheets
  • Ordnance Survey, One-Inch Revised new series, England and Wales, 1892-1908 - 691 sheets
  • Ordnance Survey, One-Inch New Popular edition, England and Wales, 1945-1947 - 114 sheets
  • Ordnance Survey, One-Inch Seventh Series, Great Britain, 1952-1961 - 190 sheets

1933 OS map of Tatham parish
Ordnance Survey One-Inch Popular Edition, published 1924 with minor corrections to 1933.
Click the map for a better view (2.9 Mb)

Lancashire County Council Environment Directorate Old Maps website
This is a comprehensive resource, and probably lists every map ever made of Lancashire, including the following, which are among the earliest:

  • John Speed 1610
  • Yates 1786
  • Greenwood 1818
  • Hennet 1829

Lancashire MARIO (Maps and Related Information Online)
This user-friendly facility is primarily intended as a means of providing up-to-date geographically based information about the county, but also provides some old mapping, including OS First Edition six-inch (1:10,000) from c. 1840, OS First Edition 24-inch (1:2,500) from c. 1890, and air photos from the 1960s.

LIDAR
This is not old mapping - quite the reverse! But LIDAR does make old earthworks and structures very easy to spot. National coverage is partial, and some parts of Tatham have not been surveyed, but those that have been are worth studying - the Roman road is a good feature to start with.

The map provided by the link above has no labels or search facility, but you can click here to see exactly where you should zoom in to find Tatham.

If you "get lost", you can discover where you are by left-clicking any point on the map; this will give you the grid reference and, more usefully, a "Geohack" link. Click that link for a large menu of maps, any of which will show the same point highlighted; best choice is probably, under "Great Britain", Bing Maps UK/OS Maps.

 

Genealogy

GENUKI
A genealogical website with details of where some relevant sources are held.

Family Search
Church of the Latter Day Saints genealogical resource with searchable worldwide resources. For England includes census 1841-1911, births, marriages and deaths since 1837, parish registers etc. It takes a while to get the hang of it but is worth it!

Free BMD
Includes all births, marriages and deaths 1837-1974 for the entire country. Tatham was in Lancaster registration district till 1869 and Lunesdale thereafter. Bentham area was in Settle until 1946 and in Ewecross from 1947.

Wills & Probate Records from 1858
Probate Calendars can be searched easily here by surname.
Information includes date of death, address, where and when proved, value of estate

Lancashire Parish Registers
Searchable baptism, marriage and death registers for the whole county
including for Tatham:

  • St James the Less: marriages 1557-1837
  • Good Shepherd: baptisms 1745-1900; marriages 1745-54; burials 1760-1812

Find My Past and Ancestry
Although these are subscription resources, they can be accessed for free in public libraries in Yorkshire and Lancashire. They include world-wide data on a variety of topics.

Ancestors of John Holme
A family tree compiled by the Holme family whose ancestors are commemorated in St James’s churchyard. They had connections with Raw Ridding and Mealbank. Like many families in the area, they also had West Indian links and Canadian links in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and many members died overseas.

Thornber family of Greenbank, Botton
This contains a lot of detail about the Thornbers and other local families they intermarried with.

       

Holme family grave at St. James-the-Less church
Holme family grave
in St. James-the-Less churchyard
(Click image to enlarge)

Clergy in Tatham

A Church of England database giving information on clergy up to the start of the 19th century.

It lists those who served in each church. Click "View" for more details of their service in the church, or on the person's name to see where else they were known to have served.

St. James the Less | Tatham Fells

Monumental Inscriptions

St. James the Less monumental inscriptions (Lancashire Family History and Heraldry Society)
A basic list of names from the gravestones. A printed guide is available in the church. The society has images of many of the graves.

(Church of the Good Shepherd MIs are available on this website)

       

St James the Less church
St. James-the-Less church
(Click image to enlarge)

George Holden 1723-93 of Tatham Green

George Holden was curate at Tatham Fells in the late 18th century and lived at The Green. Based on information collected in Liverpool on the times and heights of tides in the 1760s he calculated and published accurate tide tables for the port from the early 1770s. The secret of how this was done remained within the family for three generations. These are excellent articles about him, his family and his work.

Woodworth, P.L. 2002. Three Georges and one Richard Holden: the Liverpool tide table makers. Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 151, 19-51.
Woodworth, P.L. 2003. Some further biographical details of the Holden tide table makers. Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory Report No. 58. 20pp.


Archive Versions of the Tatham History Website

The Wayback Machine occasionally takes a snapshot of the entire Tatham History website and saves it for posterity! So if you'd like to see what was available as far back as January 2011, and several points in between, click this link.



Page constructed 30th July 2009; last updated 9th June 2020
Authors: MW & RW
Photos by MW
Click here for further authorship and copyright information