Building Control Plans
These records form the surviving building control plans of the Wigan County Borough and so document the development of Wigan's built environment in the second half of the nineteenth century.
The first general power to apply regulation to construction activity was included in the Public Health Act 1848, which allowed urban local authorities to make bye-laws relating to public health. The Local Government Act 1858 extended this explicitly to the structure and stability of buildings, the space around them and the control of fire, and the provisions were extended to rural areas by the Public Health Act 1875.
Wigan County Borough's building control plans were microfilmed by the County Surveyor's Department in the 1950s and the original records destroyed. The microfilms from which these images were taken represent the surviving record of the building control process in Wigan and include plans dating from 1851-1904.
The original microfilms can be viewed at Archives: Wigan & Leigh, alongside the original Register of Plans (1851-1934).
Note that the quality of these images is dictated by the quality of the microfilm; some scans may be of a poorer quality.
411 items were found within Building Control Plans
