Place:Austonley, West Riding of Yorkshire, England

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NameAustonley
TypeTownship
Coordinates53.567°N 1.833°W
Located inWest Riding of Yorkshire, England     ( - 1974)
Also located inWest Yorkshire, England     (1974 - )
Yorkshire, England    
See alsoAlmondbury, West Riding of Yorkshire, Englandancient parish of which it was a part
Agbrigg and Morley Wapentake, West Riding of Yorkshire, Englandearly county division in which it was located
Holmfirth, West Riding of Yorkshire, Englandurban district in which it was located 1924-1974
Holme Valley, West Yorkshire, Englanddistrict replacing Holmfirth in 1974
Kirklees, West Yorkshire, Englandmunicipal district covering the area since 1974

Austonley was a hamlet in the civil parish of Holme Valley, West Yorkshire, England, about 2 miles (3.2 km) west of the centre of Holmfirth. Today it has disappeared from all maps. To find it look for the villages of Holme and Upperthong and estimate a halfway point between them.

In the 19th century Austonley was one of many settlements dependent on local weaving mills for employment. Its population was fairly stationary at 1,450 during the period 1881-1921, but the area of the township dropped from 3,316 acres in 1881 to 1,272 acres ten years later. The area it lost was gained by the township (later parish) of Upperthong. Earlier population statistics for the townships are not published in A Vision of Britain Through Time, but between 1840 and 1880 the population may well have been higher.

The description from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72 is provided by the website A Vision of Britain Through Time (University of Portmouth Department of Geography).

"AUSTONLEY, a township in Almondbury parish, [West Riding of] Yorkshire; on the river Colne, 2 miles SW of Holmfirth [railway] station, and 6½ SSW of Huddersfield. Acres: 1,760. Real property: £5,698. Population: 1,901. Houses: 363. Many of the inhabitants are employed in manufactories."
the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Holmfirth became an urban district in 1924 and Austonley was one of many communities within the district which lost its individual identity at that time. Since the municipal reorganization of 1974, the area is now located in the Kirklees municipal district in West Yorkshire. See also Holme Valley, the name of the district within Kirklees since 1974.

image:The Holme Valley 19th cent.png
The actual distance covered by the map horizontally is less than 20 miles.

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Research Tips

  • GENUKI on Almondbury. GENUKI indexes only the ancient parishes. Townships that later became civil parishes are listed on a "supplementary page" following the page for the main parish. The GENUKIarticles only deal with events up until 1820.
  • The FamilySearch wiki for Yorkshire (all three ridings) has articles on all parishes--not just ancient parishes.
  • A Vision of Britain through Time on Holmfirth.
  • 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.


This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Austonley. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
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