Place:Wortley (near Leeds), West Riding of Yorkshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Wortley is an inner city area of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It begins one mile to the west of the city centre. The appropriate City of Leeds ward is called Farnley and Wortley.

It was known as Wirkelay until about 1700. Wortley was a weaving township within the parish of Leeds before it became industrial with coal pits, brickworks, railway yards and engine sheds—including a roundhouse, on Wellington Road. This listed building, originally constructed to house a dozen or so steam locomotives, is now the premises of a major commercial vehicle hire company. In the 1880s, Wortley became incorporated into the expanding (then) town of Leeds.

Wortley is divided into three areas: New Wortley, Upper Wortley and Lower Wortley.

New Wortley is the area closest to Leeds city centre, Armley and Holbeck and close to HM Prison Leeds. It is largely made up of 1960s high-rise flats and maisonettes.

Upper Wortley is situated between Armley and Lower Wortley; specifically between the boundaries of Tong Road to the north and Oldfield Lane/ Green Hill Lane to the south. It consists of a variety of Victorian terraces, 1950s semi-detached houses and modern low-rise flats and houses.

Lower Wortley is furthest from the city centre, closer to Farnley and between the boundaries of Oldfield Lane/ Green Hill Lane to the north and Gelderd Road to the South. Housing in Lower Wortley is predominantly 1950s semi-detached with some modern low-rise flats and houses. Lower Wortley is home to Makro and Matalan as well as many car dealerships, including main dealers for brands such as Lotus, Aston Martin, Kia, Maserati, Honda, Porsche, Ford, Mazda, Mini Cooper, BMW and Vauxhall. These are popular in this area of the city due to Lower Wortley's convenient location close to the Leeds Outer Ring Road and the M621 motorway.

Wortley became a part of Leeds in 1835.

History

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

Wortley grew, much like surrounding areas during the industrial revolution. While Wortley was home to some smaller industrial works, its proximity to the industrial centres of Armley and Holbeck encouraged gradual growth. Perhaps Wortley's most notable features at this time were the vast array of railway junctions and its two gasworks, a smaller one in Lower Wortley and Leeds' largest gasworks in New Wortley which, until early 2022, was marked by the presence of a large spiral guided gasholder.

The landscape of Wortley changed considerably following World War II, when both the Leeds Corporation and private developers redeveloped the Victorian slum areas which had characterised Wortley since it developed. New Wortley was largely developed through the building of social housing, mainly in the form of high rise flats and prefabricted houses. Despite being built opposite what was then a gas works and is now a storage facility, the prefabricated houses were built with 'all-electric' heating, as was common at the time. In 2009, as part of a fuel poverty scheme the homes were connected to gas.

Lower Wortley and Upper Wortley saw less development than New Wortley with many of their larger Victorian through terracing still remaining and the redevelopment largely being undertaken by private developers who favoured low rise developments using more traditional methods of construction.

Between 1851 and 1852 the bones of the Armley Hippo, a great northern hippopotamus now extinct in the United Kingdom, was found in the ancient former southern channel of the River Aire, in an area previously part of Wortley, where the Armley Gyratory now stands.

Research Tips

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