Place:Bolton (near Bradford), West Riding of Yorkshire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

NOTE: As the name suggests, this page is devoted to Bolton (near Bradford) in the West Riding of Yorkshire. It should not be confused with Bolton in Lancashire, or with a village named Bolton in the East Riding of Yorkshire, or with numerous other places named Bolton throughout England.

Bolton was a village that was absorbed into the City of Bradford in 1882.

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

"BOLTON, a township in Calverley parish, [West Riding of] Yorkshire; 2 miles NNE of Bradford. It includes the hamlets of Hodgson-Fold, Low-Fold, and Out-Lane, and part of the village of Frizinghall. Acres, 736. Real property, £3,604. Pop., 937. Houses, 216. The inhabitants are chiefly employed in the woollen factories."

GENUKI states that Bolton was 2 miles north of Bradford and 8 from Otley, and had a population of over 600 in the 1820s. Bolton was in the Morley division of the the wapentake of Agbrigg and Morley.

Research Tips

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