Farnhill Village Web Portal

The History Group archive contains a number of scans of paintings and drawings of the two villages – some of them quite old, others more recent. Many are unsigned and/or undated. This slideshow contains a selection of them, in approximate chronological order.

Click the image opposite to view.

Another update to our piece on the Kildwick and Farnhill Brass Band. This update includes some more information on the early history of the band.
 

From the Romans to the present day, the road from Keighley to Skipton has changed considerably. The route you would have taken depends on when you were travelling.

This update on the development of the road between Keighley and Skipton includes a photograph of one of the Keighley to Kendal Trunk Road mile-posts and a map of the 1976 proposal for Aire Valley Trunk Road.
 

A family history that begins in Kildwick in 1671 and continues, to this day, on the other side of the world.

One of our on-going projects is to document how Farnhill and Kildwick celebrated the 20th century Coronations and Jubilees.

We've added another photograph to our article on the 1911 Coronation.

You can read this updated article, or you could view all our articles on the Coronations and Jubilees.

The Farnhill WW1 Volunteers project restricted itself to those men – service men and volunteers – who were named on the list compiled for Farnhill Parish Council early in 1916. However, it was always likely that we would find that some names had been missed off this list and the project had not been going long before people started to mention the name Thomas Fielding Whitaker.

Now that the project has completed the bulk of its work, it has been possible to research TF Whitaker and, in doing so, we have found that there were three men from the family, all of whom were involved in the war, one way or another.

Read about the the Whitaker family in WW1.

At the end of 2018, the History Group was asked to help St. Andrew's Church find a new home for the Kildwick Parish Library, a collection of over 70 antique books, on various theological studies (and a cure for tooth-ache). In January 2019 a small group of us gathered in the Parish Rooms and began the task of photographing and cataloguing. A process that would lead, eventually, to the library been given a new home in the Rare Books Collection of York University.

Read about the Kildwick Parish Library.

Some time ago, members of the History Group were given access to Farnhill Hall. Among the people who came along with us was Alison Armstrong, local archeologist of vernacular buildings. This is the report she subsequently wrote for us.

Do you remember when the dual-carriageway betwen Keighley and Kildwick was built ? Some photographs of the construction at the Kildwick end of the road have been donated to our archive and we've made them into a short slideshow.

Our archive includes a number of maps of Farnhill and Kildwick. Here are some, dating from 1577 to 2012 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 further maps contributed to our archive in the past year or so.
 

The history of education in Kildwick could go back as far as Tudor times. With the help of two descendents of former masters of Kildwick school, this article provides an outline of schooling in the village from those earliest times up until the start of the 20th century.