Blackburnshire

Blackburnshire was a hundred, or ancient division of the county of Lancashire, in northern England. It was centred on Blackburn, and was divided into the four forests of Accrington, Pendle, Trawden and Rossendale.

The shire probably originated as a county of the Kingdom of Northumbria, but was much fought over, and by the time of the Domesday Book it and other hundreds in between the Ribble and Mersey rivers (called "Inter Ripam et Mersham" in the Domesday Book [Morgan (1978). pp.269c–301c,d.] ) were included with the information about Cheshire, though it cannot be said clearly to have been part of Cheshire. [Harris and Thacker (1987). write on page 252: quotation|Certainly there were links between Cheshire and south Lancashire before 1000, when Wulfric Spot held lands in both territories. Wulfric's estates remained grouped together after his death, when they were left to his brother Aelfhelm, and indeed there still seems to have been some kind of connexion in 1086, when south Lancashire was surveyed together with Cheshire by the Domesday commissioners. Nevertheless, the two territories do seem to have been distinguished from one another in some way and it is not certain that the shire-moot and the reeves referred to in the south Lancashire section of Domesday were the Cheshire ones.] [Phillips and Phillips (2002). pp. 26–31.] [Crosby, A. (1996). writes on page 31: quotation|The Domesday Survey (1086) included south Lancashire with Cheshire for convenience, but the Mersey, the name of which means 'boundary river' is known to have divided the kingdoms of Northumbria and Mercia and there is no doubt that this was the real boundary.] The separateness of the district was reinforced when it became a royal bailiwick in 1122. In 1182, it became part of the newly-created county of Lancashire. Over time, the term fell out of use, but it remained a hundred until the abandonment of that system in the early nineteenth century.

Notes and References

Bibliography

*Crosby, A. (1996). "A History of Cheshire." (The Darwen County History Series.) Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Phillimore & Co. Ltd. ISBN 0850339324.
*Harris, B. E., and Thacker, A. T. (1987). "The Victoria History of the County of Chester. (Volume 1: Physique, Prehistory, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and Domesday)." Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0197227619.
*Morgan, P. (1978). "Domesday Book Cheshire: Including Lancashire, Cumbria, and North Wales". Chichester, Sussex: Phillimore & Co. Ltd. ISBN 0850331404.
*Phillips A. D. M., and Phillips, C. B. (2002), "A New Historical Atlas of Cheshire". Chester, UK: Cheshire County Council and Cheshire Community Council Publications Trust. ISBN 0904532461.