Place:Whixley, West Riding of Yorkshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Whixley is a village and civil parish now in the Harrogate district of North Yorkshire, England. It is near the A1 major road and 10 miles west of the City of York.

In the 17th century the Tancred family became Lords of the Manor, living at Whixley Hall. The last of the line was Christopher Tancred whose portrait hangs in Christ’s College, Cambridge. A stone plaque on the Park Wall commemorates Christopher first having a paling fence around the Park in 1710 and the Park wall being finished in 1744, the Park to be for ever stocked with 40 deer. Christopher was quite a character and there are many stories about him. His sarcophagus can be seen in the Church of the Ascension.

end of Wikipedia contribution

Historically, Whixley was an ecclesiastical parish in the Upper division of the Claro Wapentake. From 1894 until 1938, Whixley was located in Great Ouseburn Rural District and from 1938 until 1974 in Nidderdale Rural District. In 1974 the area became part of the Harrogate District of North Yorkshire.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Whixley.

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

Research Tips

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