Place:Bramhope, West Riding of Yorkshire, England

Bramhope (#6 on the map) is now part of the modern civil parish of Bramhope and Carlton and a village within Leeds Metropolitan Borough, north of Holt Park and northeast of Cookridge (parts of the parish of Adel cum Eccup) (#1). The village is 9 miles (14.4 km) north of Leeds city centre. The parish had a population of 3,533 at the UK census of 2011. Prior to 1974 it was a civil parish in Wharfedale Rural District. Originally it was a township and chapelry of the ancient parish of Otley (an urban district 1894-1974) in the Skyrack Wapentake. the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia In 1086, Bramhope was the manor of an Anglo-Saxon thegn, Uchill. In 1095 the manor passed to the Percy family, and in 1165 was sold to Ralph de Bramhope. In the 13th century the monasteries owned much of the land and had granges where sheep were grazed. The monks used tracks as they travelled from their outlying granges to Kirkstall Abbey. The village had a small population until the 20th century. The Black Death of 1348-49 reduced the number of adults to 34, but this gradually increased to about 400 in 1900.

At the Dissolution of the Monasteries (1539) Henry VIII gave the land to the Earl of Cumberland. In the 16th century the Dyneley family moved into the area and acquired Bramhope Hall. In 1649 they built the Puritan Chapel, which was taken over by the Church of England after the Restoration (1660). The chapel is one of only a few built during the Commonwealth period. It is said not to have been consecrated but nevertheless was regularly used for church services until 1881–82. The Puritan Chapel is a Grade I listed building.

When the chapel proved too small for the growing population, St Giles' Church was built in 1881. The original Methodist chapel was built in 1837 and replaced by the much bigger church in 1896. Bramhope Cemetery, established in 1861, is in Moor Road, but there are still some historical gravestones remaining in the cemetery of the Puritan Chapel.

Research Tips

• GENUKI on Bramhope. 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 articles only deal with events up until 1820. It is worth glancing through the other places listed on the supplementary page to see if it lists any other communities within Bramhope township.
• The FamilySearch wiki for Yorkshire (all three ridings) has articles on all parishes--not just ancient parishes.
• A Vision of Britain through Time on Bramhope.
• 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.