Alverthorpe is a

suburb A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area, which may include commercial and mixed-use, that is primarily a residential area. A suburb can exist either as part of a larger city/urban area or as a separ ...

of, and former village in

Wakefield Wakefield is a cathedral city in West Yorkshire, England located on the River Calder. The city had a population of 99,251 in the 2011 census.https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011/ks101ew Census 2011 table KS101EW Usual resident population, ...

West Yorkshire West Yorkshire is a metropolitan and ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. It is an inland and upland county having eastward-draining valleys while taking in the moors of the Pennines. West Yorkshire came into exi ...

, England.

History

After the start of the

Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...

woollen and

worsted Worsted ( or ) is a high-quality type of wool yarn, the fabric made from this yarn, and a yarn weight category. The name derives from Worstead, a village in the English county of Norfolk. That village, together with North Walsham and Aylsham ...

yarns were spun and woollen and worsted cloth woven in the mills and factories that were built in the valley. Rope and twine were also manufactured. In 1830 the township's population was 4,590 and in 1870 it had 1,423 houses and the population had risen to 6,645. A. Talbot & Sons manufactured sweets for many years in a factory with a landmark chimney which was originally a rag mill. The company originated in 1890, selling wholesale groceries from a

horse-drawn vehicle A horse-drawn vehicle is a mechanized piece of equipment pulled by one horse or by a team of horses. These vehicles typically had two or four wheels and were used to carry passengers and/or a load. They were once common worldwide, but they have m ...

, but moved into boiled sweet manufacture when its sweet supplier, John Kay of Flushdyke, retired and gave it his recipes. The company's humbugs, mint imperials,

toffee Toffee is a confection made by caramelizing sugar or molasses (creating inverted sugar) along with butter, and occasionally flour. The mixture is heated until its temperature reaches the hard crack stage of . While being prepared, toffee ...

s and Yorkshire mixtures became popular throughout Yorkshire and further afield. The Talbots ran the business until the mid-1960s, when it was sold to Victory V lozenges. In the early 20th century,

rhubarb Rhubarb is the fleshy, edible stalks ( petioles) of species and hybrids (culinary rhubarb) of '' Rheum'' in the family Polygonaceae, which are cooked and used for food. The whole plant – a herbaceous perennial growing from short, thick rhi ...

was grown in the surrounding area, the region known as the

Rhubarb Triangle The Rhubarb Triangle is a area of West Yorkshire, England between Wakefield, Morley and Rothwell famous for producing early forced rhubarb. It includes Kirkhamgate, East Ardsley, Stanley, Lofthouse and Carlton. The Rhubarb Triangle was ...

. Forcing sheds were surrounded by fields of rhubarb plants.

Governance

Alverthorpe and Thornes was anciently a township which included Westgate Common, Flanshaw,

Kirkhamgate Kirkhamgate is a village, north-west of Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England. It originated as a hamlet in the Alverthorpe township in the parish of Wakefield in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Geography Kirkhamgate is situated on rising ground at ...

and Silcoates in the

ecclesiastical parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or m ...

in the

wapentake A hundred is an administrative division that is geographically part of a larger region. It was formerly used in England, Wales, some parts of the United States, Denmark, Southern Schleswig, Sweden, Finland, Norway, the Bishopric of Ösel–Wiek, ...

Agbrigg and Morley Agbrigg and Morley was a wapentake of the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. The main purpose of the wapentake was the administration of justice by a local court. At the time of the Domesday survey in 1086, Agbrigg and Morley were separate wap ...

in the

West Riding of Yorkshire The West Riding of Yorkshire is one of three historic subdivisions of Yorkshire, England. From 1889 to 1974 the administrative county County of York, West Riding (the area under the control of West Riding County Council), abbreviated County ...

. The town hall was in Green Lane, and it had a

workhouse In Britain, a workhouse () was an institution where those unable to support themselves financially were offered accommodation and employment. (In Scotland, they were usually known as poorhouses.) The earliest known use of the term ''workhouse' ...

off Light Lane, as well as its own sewage farm and slaughterhouse. After the passing of the

Poor Law Amendment Act The ''Poor Law Amendment Act 1834'' (PLAA) known widely as the New Poor Law, was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed by the Whig government of Earl Grey. It completely replaced earlier legislation based on the ''Poor Relief ...

of 1834, Alverthorpe became one of the 17 constituent parishes of the Wakefield Poor Law Union formed in 1837.

Geography

Alverthorpe is north west of Wakefield in the valley of the Alverthorpe Beck which supplied water for the mills. The underlying rocks are the

coal measures In lithostratigraphy, the coal measures are the coal-bearing part of the Upper Carboniferous System. In the United Kingdom, the Coal Measures Group consists of the Upper Coal Measures Formation, the Middle Coal Measures Formation and the Lower Coa ...

of the South Yorkshire Coalfield. Much of the meadowland between Alverthorpe and the neighbouring village of Wrenthorpe is a designated Local Nature Reserve, comprising 52 acres (25 ha).

Economy

Bective Mills, which now produces Sirdar hand

knitting Knitting is a method by which yarn is manipulated to create a textile, or fabric. It is used to create many types of garments. Knitting may be done by hand or by machine. Knitting creates stitches: loops of yarn in a row, either flat or i ...

and rug wool, was established in Alverthorpe over 200 years ago. The company's 1791 Hebble Mill was replaced after being destroyed by fire in 1905. Thomas and Henry Harrap developed the business as ''Messrs Harrap Bros. Ltd.'' from 1880 onwards and the buildings and equipment continued to be upgraded and extended throughout the twentieth century. Now operating as ''Sirdar Spinning Ltd'', the mill is one of Britain's foremost

spinning mills for hand knitting wool.

Transport

The village is located on the road from Wakefield to

Batley Batley is a market town in the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees, in West Yorkshire, England. Batley lies south-west of Leeds, north-west of Wakefield and Dewsbury, south-east of Bradford and north-east of Huddersfield. Batley is part of the ...

. It lies just over a kilometre north of the A638 road from Wakefield to

Dewsbury Dewsbury is a minster and market town in the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees in West Yorkshire, England. It lies on the River Calder and on an arm of the Calder and Hebble Navigation waterway. It is to the west of Wakefield, east of Hudd ...

, which intersects with the

M1 motorway The M1 motorway connects London to Leeds, where it joins the A1(M) near Aberford, to connect to Newcastle. It was the first inter-urban motorway to be completed in the UK; the first motorway in the country was the Preston By-pass, which ...

(at junction 40), about 5 km from Alverthorpe. A railway line ran through the village, and Alverthorpe railway station, close to the village centre, was opened in October 1872 by the Great Northern Railway. In 1923 it became part of the

London and North Eastern Railway The London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) was the second largest (after LMS) of the " Big Four" railway companies created by the Railways Act 1921 in Britain. It operated from 1 January 1923 until nationalisation on 1 January 1948. At th ...

. The line passed to the Eastern Region of

British Railways British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four British ...

on nationalisation in 1948 and closed in April 1954. The railway, bridges and embankments have all now been removed.

Education

Silcoates School Silcoates School is a co-educational independent school in the village of Wrenthorpe near Wakefield, England. The school was founded in 1820 as the Northern Congregational School at Silcoates House, for the board and education of the sons of Non ...

was founded in 1830 as the Northern Congregational School. St Paul's CofE Junior and Infant school is situated in Alverthorpe, with Mr Lee Swift as the current headteacher.

Religious sites

The stone built Anglican church of St Paul stands at the top of a hill, north of the village. It is a

Commissioners' Church A Commissioners' church, also known as a Waterloo church and Million Act church, is an Anglican church in the United Kingdom built with money voted by Parliament as a result of the Church Building Acts of 1818 and 1824. The 1818 Act supplie ...

built in 1826 to accommodate 1,590 worshippers, at a cost of , (based on increases in average earnings, this would be approximately £6,352,000 in 2016). The graveyard on the south, north and west sides of the church is specifically for church burials; there was a Local Authority graveyard to the south. There was a

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's ...

chapel in the centre of the village, but the building is now used for business purposes. A

Presbyterian Presbyterianism is a part of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland by John Knox, who was a priest at St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland). Presbyterian churches derive their nam ...

congregation met in a disused malt kiln in Flanshaw Lane from 1672, but moved to a new chapel in 1697 which combined the Flanshaw and Wakefield congregations. A Presbyterian burial ground with over a hundred graves remained in the village until the tombstones were removed around 1905 and the ground was used for

market garden A market garden is the relatively small-scale production of fruits, vegetables and flowers as cash crops, frequently sold directly to consumers and restaurants. The diversity of crops grown on a small area of land, typically from under to ...

ing.

Notable people

* Charles Annable (1905–1957) English professional rugby league footballer; his birth was registered in Alverthorpe * R M A Kingswell (1909–1992), English rugby union official and president of the Rugby Football Union was from Alverthorpe * Paul Sykes (1946–2007), British heavyweight boxer, weightlifter, writer, prisoner and debt collector, buried in Alverthorpe * Harry Willcock (1896–1952), born in Alverthorpe,"Harry Willcock"
''The Scotsman'' 14 June 2006; location confirmed by 1953 ''National Probate Calendar'' British Liberal activist and the last person in the UK to be prosecuted for refusing to produce an identity card

References

{{authority control Suburbs of Wakefield