Place:Farnham, West Riding of Yorkshire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Farnham is now a civil parish and a village in the Harrogate District of North Yorkshire, England. It is situated immediately north of Knaresborough.

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

"FARNHAM, a township and a parish in Knaresborough [registration] district, [West Riding of] Yorkshire. The township lies on an affluent of the river Ure, near the Boroughbridge railway, 2 miles N of Knaresborough. Acres: 1,350. Real property: £1,899; of which £50 are in quarries. Population: 165. Houses: 34. The parish includes also the townships of Scotton and Ferensby, and part of Arkendale. Post town, Knaresborough. Real property, with the rest of Arkendale: £8,205. Population: 609. Houses: 148. The property is much subdivided. The manor belongs to the Maudes. Copper ore occurs. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Ripon. Value, £130. Patrons, the Rev. T. Collins and Mr. Shann. The church belonged to the priory of Bello Valle; is partly Norman; and was recently restored. There is a Wesleyan chapel."

Historically, Farnham was an ancient and ecclesiastical parish in the Lower division of the Claro Wapentake. From 1894 until 1938, Farnham was located in Knaresborough Rural District and from 1938 until 1974 in Nidderdale Rural District. In 1974 the area became part of the Harrogate District of North Yorkshire.

The page, Knaresborough Rural District, has an outline map of all the civil parishes in the district.

Research Tips

• GENUKI on Farnham. The GENUKI page gives numerous references to local bodies providing genealogical assistance.
• The FamilySearch wiki on the ecclesiastical parish of Farnham provides a list of useful resources for the local area.
• A Vision of Britain through Time on Farnham.
• A Vision of Britain through Time also 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. Those listed here provide data for the part of the West Riding that transferred to North Yorkshire in 1974 plus the northern parts of Leeds and Bradford. These maps all blow up to a scale that will illustrate small villages and large farms or estates.

• Ordnance Survey West Riding 1888. The "Sanitary Districts (which preceded the rural districts) for the whole of the West Riding.
• Ordnance Survey Northern part of the West Riding 1900 The rural and urban districts, not long after their introduction. (rural districts of Sedbergh, Settle, Skipton, Pateley Bridge, Ripon, Knaresborough, Great Ouseburn, Clitheroe, Wharfedale, Wetherby, York, Bishopthorpe, Keighley, the northern part of Bradford, the northern part of Leeds, the northern part of Hunslet Urban District, the northern part of Tadcaster Rural District, the northern part of Selby Rural District). [Note: this map appears to be no longer available on the Vision of Britain website. This is unfortunate because the equivalent map from 1931-44 was redrawn after the 1938 reorganization of the rural districts in the northern part of the West Riding.]
• Ordnance Survey Northern part of the West Riding 1944. The urban and rural districts of the northern part of the West Riding (mostly Settle, Skipton, Ripon and Pateley Bridge, and Nidderdale, with sections of Wharfedale and Wetherby) after the revisions of 1938.