Place:Boston Spa, West Riding of Yorkshire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Boston Spa is a village and civil parish in the City of Leeds metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. Situated south of Wetherby, Boston Spa is on the south bank of the River Wharfe which separates it from Thorp Arch. According to the 2001 census the parish had a population of 4,006 rising to 4,079 in the 2011 census.

It sits in the Wetherby ward of Leeds City Council and Elmet and Rothwell parliamentary constituency.

History

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

The Boston Spa hoard, a Romano-British coin hoard dating to the mid 2nd-century AD and comprising a grey ware vessel and 172 silver denarii, was found in the town in 1848.

In 1744, John Shires established a spa town when he discovered sulphur springs in the magnesian limestone. It was known as Thorp Spa but declined when Harrogate became very popular as a spa town.

In 1753, a turnpike was built on the Tadcaster to Otley road, which passes through Boston Spa. In the same year, Joseph Taite built a house to accommodate visitors that became the Royal Hotel, which is still standing, but converted into flats and shops. By 1819, Boston Spa had a population of more than 600, and several inns and other houses offering accommodation had been built . Spa baths were built to allow visitors to take the waters. On the north bank of the river is the village of Thorp Arch, which predates Boston Spa by several centuries.

The Boston Spa and Thorp Arch Conservation Area, designated in 1969, extended across both Boston Spa and Thorp Arch parishes. It was revised in 2009, restricting the boundaries to Boston Spa parish and reshaped to exclude areas of late-20th-century estate housing to the south of the High Street. The current conservation area boundary focuses on the historic settlement. It was extended to the west, to encompass West End, an area of dwellings constructed during the Second World War to house workers from Thorp Arch munitions factory. The war had a major effect on Boston Spa's population, society and surroundings, and the buildings stand as a testament to that history.

Governance

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

When Boston Spa was founded in 1744 it was in the township of Clifford in the old parish of Bramham, in the upper division of the wapentake of Barkston Ash, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. From 1866 to 1896 it was part of the civil parish of Clifford with Boston, and became a separate civil parish in 1896. The parish was in Wetherby Rural District in the West Riding of Yorkshire until 1974, when it was transferred to the City of Leeds in the new county of West Yorkshire.

Research Tips

• GENUKI on Boston Spa. The GENUKI page gives numerous references to local bodies providing genealogical assistance.
• The FamilySearch wiki on the ecclesiastical parish of Bramham provides a list of useful resources for the local area.
• A Vision of Britain through Time on Boston Spa.
• 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.
• Ordnance Survey Southern part of the West Riding 1944 shows the southern part of the West Riding (including the southern part of Wetherby Rural District).