Historic parliamentary divisions, wards and maps

[Bogie]

Hi everyone,

Is there any "easy" way of finding out what historic parliamentary division and ward a place fell under?

I've spent several hours this afternoon trying to locate which division and ward a village which lies on the changing Cheshire/Lancashire boundaries was in during the 1920s and 30s, and did not know how to find out if / where I might find historic electoral registers for it.

Findmypast lets you browse by Parliamentary Division etc, but I couldn't find out which one!

After lots of to-ing and fro-ing and Wikipedia-ing, I eventually found my answer, but was wondering if there was somewhere obvious for previous electoral boundaries that I might have missed - like the 1851 parish jurisdictions map or the Gazetteer of Britain?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions! 

[arthurk]

I think this would be available at A Vision of Britain (http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/) but the site is down at the moment. When it's working again, find the village you want, and there are various tables showing which units it's been part of; maps too, but I'm not sure exactly which ones.

The National Library of Scotland has maps of England at https://maps.nls.uk/. Pick a large scale one (single sheet) for the date you want and constituency boundaries should be shown. Where a boundary reaches the edge of the sheet, the constituencies either side of it are usually named in the margin.

I don't think I've ever seen a map going down to ward level except possibly very large scale ones of urban areas.

[Bogie]

Thanks very much for your reply! Yes, Vision of Britain is a good one. Will remember to try there first next time! 

[arthurk]

Glad it was helpful - it's not the flashiest of sites, but if you keep digging there's a lot there.