Place:Birstall, West Riding of Yorkshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Birstall is a large village in the metropolitan borough of Kirklees, West Yorkshire, England and situated roughly 6 miles south-west of Leeds. It features a quaint triangular Victorian marketplace, which replaced an earlier market on High Street in the Georgian area of the village further up the hill. There is still a market on Thursdays.

Situated centrally between Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield and Wakefield close to the M62 motorway, Birstall has always benefited from good transport links but more recently has seen massive growth because of the expansion of Leeds resulting in a growth of commuters wishing to live in more rural surroundings.

Birstall does not feature in the Domesday Book but is alluded to as one of two main settlements within Gomersal, and was listed in 'Pigot's National Commercial Directory for 1828-29' as one of the four villages which make up the township of Gomersal.

Prior to 1937, Birstall had its own Urban District Council when financial discrepancies forced an unpopular merger with the UDC of neighbouring Batley. Just over 30 years later, this, in turn was merged into Kirklees when the metropolitan councils were formed in 1974.

Historically it was an ecclesiastical parish in Morley-division of the wapentake of Agbrigg and Morley.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Birstall. The section "History" contains some interesting material.

Research Tips

• GENUKI on Birstall. The GENUKI page gives numerous references to local bodies providing genealogical assistance.
• A Vision of Britain through Time on Birstall.
• The FamilySearch wiki on the ecclesiastical parish of Birstall provides a list of useful resources for the local area.
• 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.