Place:Askwith, West Riding of Yorkshire, England

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia Askwith (#4 on map) is now a civil parish and a village in the Harrogate District of North Yorkshire, England. In the UK census of 2001 it had a population of 220 which had increased to 240 at the 2011 UK census. The village is located in Wharfedale, and is close to the present border between West Yorkshire and North Yorkshire. Before 1974 the border between the West Riding of Yorkshire and the North Riding of Yorkshire was much further away. (See below.) Nearby towns are Otley and Ilkley. The gazetteer designer Edward Baines (1774–1848) lists the village as "Asquith" in 1822 and the publisher Samuel Lewis lists it as "Askwith, or Asquith" in 1848. It gave its name to the Asquith family including the British Prime Minister of the early 20th century, Herbert H. Asquith. The following description from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72 is provided by the website A Vision of Britain Through Time (University of Portmouth Department of Geography). "ASKWITH, a township in Weston parish, [West Riding of] Yorkshire; near the river Wharfe, 3 miles NW of Otley. It includes the hamlets of Upper and Lower Snowden. Acres: 3,180. Real property: £3,329. Population: 338. Houses: 76." Askwith was originally a township in the ancient parish of Weston (#25) in the Claro Wapentake, one of the early subdivisions of the West Riding of Yorkshire. From 1894 until 1974 it was part of the Wharfedale Rural District.

In 1974, under the Local Government Act 1972, all urban and rural districts across England were abolished and counties were reorganized into metropolitan and non-metropolitan districts. At the same time the northern section of the West Riding of Yorkshire became part of the new administrative county of North Yorkshire which was divided into non-metropolitan districts. Askwith became a parish in the Harrogate District of North Yorkshire.

Research Tips

• GENUKI on Askwith. GENUKI indexes only the ancient parishes. Townships that later became civil parishes are listed on a "supplementary page" following the page for the main parish. The articles only deal with events up until 1820.
• The FamilySearch wiki for Yorkshire (all three ridings) has articles on all parishes--not just ancient parishes.
• A Vision of Britain through Time provides links to maps of the West Riding, produced by the United Kingdom Ordnance Survey, illustrating the boundaries between the civil parishes and the rural districts at various dates. The location of individual settlements within the parishes is also shown. These maps all expand to a very large scale.

• Ordnance Survey West Riding 1888. The "Sanitary Districts (which preceded the rural districts) for the whole of the West Riding.
• Ordnance Survey West Riding North 1900 and Ordnance Survey West Riding South 1900. The rural and urban districts, not long after their introduction. NOTE: In 2022 the map of the southern section is not available through the Vision of Britain website. It is unknown if this omission is accidental or if the copy used by the university has been damaged in some way.
• Yorkshire West Riding South and Yorkshire West Riding North revised_1944. These two maps illustrate the urban and rural districts of the whole of the West Riding after the revisions of 1935.
• A further useful map on A Vision of Britain through Time is a boundary map dated 1917. This shows all the boundaries of villages, townships and parishes in the Holmfirth area.