Place:Calverley, West Riding of Yorkshire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Calverley is a village in the City of Leeds metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England, on the A657 road, about from Leeds city centre and from Bradford. The population of Calverley in 2011 was 4,328. It is part of the City of Leeds ward Calverley and Farsley, with a population of 22,594 at the 2011 Census.

Prior to being linked to Pudsey, Calverley was an independent urban district from 1894 until 1937. From 1882 until 1894 it had been part of Bradford.

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Calverly from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:

"CALVERLEY, a village, a township, a subdistrict, and a parish, in Bradford district, [West Riding of] Yorkshire. The village stands adjacent to the river Aire and to the Leeds and Bradford railway, 4½ miles NE of Bradford; and has a station on the railway, and a post office under Leeds. The township includes also the hamlets of Woodhall-Hill, Womersley-Row, and Bagley, and parts of the villages of Apperley-Bridge, Rodley, and Stanningley; and bears the name of Calverley-with-Farsley. Acres: 3,500. Real property: £15,857; of which £300 are in mines, and £330 in quarries. Population: 5,559. Houses: 1,231.

"The subdistrict is conterminate with the township. The parish includes also the townships of Pudsey, Bolton, and Idle. Acres: 8,998. Rated property, £52,195. Population: in 1841, 21,039; in 1861: 28,563. Houses: 6,354. The property is much subdivided.

"Calverley Hall was the seat of the ancient family of Calverley, and the scene, in 1604, of the subject of the "Yorkshire Tragedy", erroneously ascribed to Shakspeare; and was converted, early in the present century, into separate tenements for manufacturers. Many of the inhabitants are employed in woollen and worsted mills.

"The living is a vicarage, united with the [perpetual] curacy of Bolton, in the diocese of Ripon. Value: £230. Patron: the Bishop of Ripon. The church is good. The chapelries of Farsley, Pudsey, St. Paul's, and Idle are separate benefices. There are four dissenting chapels, a mechanics' institute, four public schools, and charities £54."

GENUKI provides a description of the ecclesiastical parish of Calverley from a gazetteer from the 1820s. It was in the Morley division of the Agbrigg and Morley Wapentake.

Research Tips

• GENUKI on Calverley. The GENUKI page gives numerous references to local bodies providing genealogical assistance.
• The FamilySearch wiki on the ecclesiastical parish of Calverley provides a list of useful resources for the local area.
• A Vision of Britain through Time on Calverley.
• Calverley parish records a good collection, and other information about the village
• 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.