Place:Eccleshill, 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

Eccleshill is an area, former village, and ward within the City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council in the county of West Yorkshire, England. The ward population of Eccleshill is 17,540,^[1] increasing at the 2011 Census to 17,945. Eccleshill is a more or less completely residential urban area with very little open space^[1] although there is substantial open land directly to the east.

The origins of the name Eccleshill are uncertain. At the time of the Domesday Book the area was known as Egleshill either meaning 'eagles hill' or perhaps named after a Saxon landlord called Aikel or Eckil—alternatively it could mean Ecclesiastical Hill.

Historically, Eccleshill was in the ecclesiastical parish of Bradford in the Morley Division of the wapentake of Agbrigg and Morley. Eccleshill was made an urban district in 1894, but was absorbed into the city of Bradford in 1899.

History

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

"ECCLESHILL, a township-chapelry in Bradford parish, [West Riding of] Yorkshire; on the river Aire, adjacent to the Leeds and Lancaster railway, near Apperley station, 3 miles NNE of Bradford. It includes part of Apperley-Bridge village; and has a post office under Leeds. Acres, 1,070. Real property, £10,549; of which £260 are in mines. Pop., 4,482. Houses, 1,038. Many of the inhabitants are employed in the woollen trade. The chapelry was constituted in 1858. The living is a p. curacy in the diocese of Ripon. Value, £64.* Patron, the Vicar of Bradford. The church is modern; and there are five dissenting chapels, two public schools, and a mechanics' institute built in 1869."

Research Tips

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