Horsforth

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Horsforth is a suburb of the City of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. grid reference SE236376

Town Street,Horsforth

Horsforth was considered to have the largest population of any village in the United Kingdom during the latter part of the nineteenth century. It became officially part of the City of Leeds in 1974.

It has been primarily an agricultural village, although it was also home to quarries of high quality and a number of mills along the banks of Horsforth/Moseley Beck. Stone from Horsforth was used in the construction of Kirkstall Abbey and Scarborough seafront.

Horsforth, up until the mid nineteenth century a small agricultural community, expanded rapidly with the growth of the nearby industrial centre of Leeds.

Horsforth is home to Horsforth Museum, whose collections and displays aim to illustrate aspects of life set against the backdrop of the changing role of the village.

Leeds Trinity & All Saints, a college accredited by the University of Leeds, is on Brownberrie Lane. It is affectionately known as TASC, or TASC Island, by its students.

A regular event in Horsforth is the Horsforth Mile pub crawl. This usually starts off usually at the Fox and Hounds next to the railway station, although this is regarded by many as being in Cookridge, so an alternative is to begin at The Old Ball, and meanders its way through at least 10 pubs in the town.

Cookridge Hospital is near to Horsforth - nearer in fact than it is to Cookridge.

[edit] Communications

Horsforth has a railway station on the Leeds to Harrogate line. The Station itself is actually situated within the Cookridge boundaries, as it is on the Cookridge side of Moseley beck.

Horsforth once had another railway station, situated on the far side of the river and accessible by crossing Pollard's Bridge (the bridge connecting Newlay Lane in Horsforth to Newlay Lane in Bramley). The station was on the Airedale Line (Leeds-Shipley-Skipton), and was closed on 22nd March 1965, along with the other Leeds stations on the Airedale Line (Armley Canal Road, Kirkstall, Calverley & Rodley and Apperley Bridge).

The town is served by First Leeds bus routes 8, 9, 31, 32, 33/33a, 50/50a, 81, 82, 97/97a, 731 and 757.

[edit] History

Horsforth first appeared in the Domesday Book and its name is from horse and ford. This refers to a river crossing situated somewhere in shallow water along the River Aire, probably used for the transportation of woolen goods to and from Pudsey, Shipley and Bradford. The original ford was situated off Calverley Lane (near the rubbish tip), but was replaced by a stone footbridge at the turn of the 19th Century.

The three unnamed Saxon theigns that held the land at the conquest gave way to the King, Robert de Bruce and then lesser Norman nobles, but it was not long after this that most of the village came under the control of Kirkstall Abbey, a nearby Cistercian house founded in 1152 AD.

At the dissolution (1539 AD) Horsforth was partitioned and sold off to five families, one of which was the Stanhopes who achieved supremacy and controlled the village for the next three hundred years. The estate record of the Stanhopes are regarded as one of the most extensive and important collections of its kind, complementing the extensive mediaeval record associated with Kirkstall Abbey's activities.

Industrially, Horsforth has a long history of producing high quality stone from its quarries. Not only did it supply Kirkstall Abbey with building materials and millstones in the medieval period, it provided the stone for Scarborough seafront and sent its prized sandstone from its Golden Bank quarry as far afield as Egypt. Situated on Horsforth Beck were a string of mills serving the textile trade, but a large area of the village still reflects its original function as an agricultural community.

In the late nineteenth century it achieved note as the village with the largest population in England. Railways, turnpike roads, tramways, and the nearby airport canal made it a focus for almost all forms of public and commercial transport and sealed its fate as a dormitory 'town' of Leeds. Despite its large population and extensive commercial activity this suburban role appears to have stopped it achieving independent town status and it remained a village (as an urban district) until its formal amalgamation with the City of Leeds in 1974.

[edit] Famous people from Horsforth

The government minister David Miliband, although originally from London, attended Horsforth Newlaithes Junior School in the 1970s when his father Ralph Miliband was a professor at the University of Leeds.