Farnhill Village Web Portal

Photographs of a group of dancers at Kildwick Hall suggests that a wild time was being had while local men were still fighting in WW1. However, the full story is more nuanced than the photos would suggest.

Click here.
 

Our archive includes a number of maps of Farnhill and Kildwick. Here are some, dating from 1577 to 2015 in approximately chronological order, made into a slideshow. It's interesting to see how views of the area have changed.

We've updated this slideshow with some more maps recently donated to the History Group.

Click the image opposite to view.
 

Chantries were small religious establishments typically founded by rich individuals, often by means of a bequest within the individual’s will, to provide for masses to be said for the soul of the founder, in order to speed its passage through purgatory.

A chantry was founded in Kildwick by Margaret Blaine in 1505 and was dissolved, during the reformation, in 1547. But it may have had an interesting afterlife ...

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Kildwick Church underwent substantial renovation in 1901-3. But it wasn't just the fabric of the building that was examined, significant improvements were also made to the organ - including the installation of a radical new way of getting air to the pipes: a "Water Engine".

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Chartism was a Victorian era working class movement for political reform in Britain between 1838 and 1848.

Part 1 - 1815 to 1845 - Updated 30/07/2022 - with a link to a recent article in the Keighley News
Part 2 - 1848...a turning point in history when history refused to turn (A J P Taylor)

There are also a couple of interesting podcasts on the subject that you might like to listen to:

• "In Our Time" - BBC - Feb 2023
• "History Extra Podcast" - May 2023 (starts 1 minute in)
   

The Mullions, on Newby Road, has always been a bit of a mystery. It's obviously an old building but one that doesn't seem to have had any history. Now a member of the History Group has uncovered its story.

Click here.

Two destructive mill fires in Farnhill, one in December 1905 and the other in March 1906, effectively ended industrial development within the village, as well as causing significant unemployment and hardship. Read our article about the devastating fires of 1905 and 1906, which we have updated with additional information on the history of what happened to Farnhill Mill after the 1905 fire.

You can also view a slideshow of photographs taken at the time.
 

Anne Paton lived in Farnhill during WWII. She was the daughter of the Methodist minister, Rev. Hodgkinson.

This short piece, transcribed from two letters written to the History Group, describes her life as a child during wartime.

We first encountered the post-war Welcome Home Committee when we wrote our article about Farnhill's connection with the Great Escape. Since then we've done further research into some of the activities organised to welcome back the men and women who went away to war, culminating in a performance of Hadyn's Creation and the Kildwick Races. Along the way they managed to raise 1000 pounds.

This update provides the full programme for the final fund-raising event; the Kildwick Races.
 

A recently found photograph turns out to have an interesting story to tell of changes to the interior of the St. Andrew's church.

Not only that, it turns out to be one of the earliest photographs of the church; and possibly one of the earliest ever taken in Yorkshire.

Read here.

There was a major reorganisation of local government in 1974, as a result of which Farnhill became part of North Yorkshire whilst Kildwick was allocated to Bradford Metropolitan District. We have updated our article on the nine year struggle to reunite the "twin" villages with information from the minutes of Kildwick Parish Meeting.
 

Burials inside a church are not unusual. The great and the good often have family vaults or individual graves below the floor of the building. Generally speaking, the more important the family – that is the more money they had – the closer the burial was to the altar.

There are a number of burials below the floor of Kildwick Church, often with memorials on a wall close-by. One of the strangest of these memorials is a pair of small brass plaques attached to one of the pillars. Read here.