Place:Stonebeck Up, West Riding of Yorkshire, England

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia Stonebeck Up (#11 on the left side of the map) is now a civil parish and a village in Harrogate District, North Yorkshire, England. The only village in the parish is Middlesmoor. The population of the parish in the 2011 census was 119. The parish occupies the highest part of the Nidderdale valley. It is bounded on the south side by Stean Beck, from which the parish takes its name (stean being a dialect form of "stone"); the beck separates it from the parish of Stonebeck Down. To the west and north it is bounded by a ridge, including the summits of Great Whernside and Little Whernside, and to the east it is bounded by Masham Moor, a ditch known as Mere Dike, and the River Nidd. The parish includes Angram and Scar House Reservoirs, and large areas of grouse moor. Historically Stonebeck Up was a township in the ancient parish of Kirkby Malzeard in the Claro Wapentake of the West Riding of Yorkshire. In the Middle Ages it formed part of the lands of Byland Abbey, which established granges (farms) at Middlesmoor, Limley, Newhouses, Woodale, Lodge, Angram, Haden Carr and Scar House. The granges survived as farming communities into the twentieth century. Angram and Haden Carr were submerged by the reservoirs, and Lodge was abandoned when Scar House Reservoir was constructed in the 1930s. Stonebeck Up became a separate civil parish in 1866, and became part of the Pateley Bridge Rural District between 1894 and 1937 and of the Ripon and Pateley Bridge Rural District between 1937 and 1974. It was transferred from the West Riding to Harrogate District in the new administrative county of North Yorkshire in 1974.

Research Tips

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