Place:Menwith with Darley, West Riding of Yorkshire, England

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following descriptions of Menwith and Darley from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72: "MENWITH-WITH-DARLEY, a township in Hampsthwaite parish, [West Riding of] Yorkshire; on the river Nidd, 4½ miles SSE of Pateley-Bridge. Acres, 2,480. Real property, £3,178. Population: 650. Houses, 158. The manor belongs to the Duke of Devonshire. The church of Thornthwaite chapelry is here; and there are chapels for Quakers, Wesleyans, and Primitive Methodists, an endowed school with £40 a year, and charities £15." "DARLEY, a township, united with Menwith, in Hampsthwaite parish, [West Riding of] Yorkshire; near the Nidd-Valley railway, 5½ miles W of Ripley. It has a post office under Ripley. See Menwith-with-Darley." Historically, Menwith with Darley (#9 on the left side of the map) was in the ancient and ecclesiastical parish of Hampsthwaite in the Lower division of the Claro Wapentake. From 1894 until 1937, Menwith with Darley was located in Pateley Bridge Rural District and from 1937 until 1974 in Ripon and Pateley Bridge Rural District. In 1974 the area became part of the Harrogate District of North Yorkshire. the following text is taken from an article in Wikipedia Royal Air Force Menwith Hill or more simply RAF Menwith Hill is a Royal Air Force station near Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England which provides communications and intelligence support services to the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Menwith Hill Station was opened in 1954 on 545 acres (2.21 km2) of land acquired by the British War Office and leased to the United States. The majority of support services has been provided by the United States Air Force, 421st Air Base Group. For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article RAF Menwith Hill.

Research Tips

• GENUKI on Menwith with Darley. The GENUKI page gives numerous references to local bodies providing genealogical assistance.

GENUKI has a supplementary page on Menwith.

• The FamilySearch wiki on the ecclesiastical parish of Hampsthwaite provides a list of useful resources for the local area.
• A Vision of Britain through Time on Menwith, and on Darley.
• 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.