Micklethwaite is a village near to

Bingley Bingley is a market town and civil parish in the metropolitan borough of the City of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, on the River Aire and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, which had a population of 18,294 at the 2011 Census. Bingley railwa ...

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. The village is separated from Bingley end of

Crossflatts Crossflatts is a ribbon development in Airedale along the old route of the A650 road between Bingley and Keighley, in the Metropolitan Borough of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. The opening of the Aire Valley Trunk road in 2004 has seen a r ...

by the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. It is part of Bingley Ward, and population statistics are accounted for in the ward censuses.

History

Micklethwaite is north of Bingley, and east of Keighley. The village is mentioned in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

as being part of Bingley, among many other smaller settlements, and having six ploughlands and woodland. The village was recorded in the Domesday Book as ''Muceltu(o)it'', and derives from two

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and t ...

words of ''Mikill'' and ''þveit'', meaning ''Great Clearing''. Historically 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, C ...

Skyrack Skyrack was a wapentake of the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. It was split into upper and lower divisions and centred in Headingley, Leeds. The Lower Division included the parishes of Aberford, Bardsey, Barwick-in-Elmet, Kippax, Thorne ...

, the village was linked as part of Bingley, with the township being known as ''Bingley-with-Micklethwaite''. The village developed as an agricultural hamlet, but during the 19th century, worsted mills were opened up on the south side of the village adjoining the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. The canal was opened in the late 1770s, but the current single-lane steel swing bridge dates from 1985. The bridge at Micklethwaite, known to the canal as bridge 199, is built on ancient road connect Bingley with Ilkley over Hawksworth Moor. The bridge was also an embarkation/disembarkation point for canal services to and from Skipton and the west, before the railway arrived in the valley. In 1875, the Methodist chapel was built to replace an earlier structure. Since 1974, the village has been located in West Yorkshire. Proposals for a new town council for Bingley in 2000, left Crossflatts and Micklethwaite out as the railway bridge in Crossflatts was the boundary between Bingley ward and Rombalds Ward, with Micklethwaite being tied to Ilkley. In April 2016, the new Bingley Town Council was created, with Micklethwaite coing under the remit of the new town council. The village is part of Bingley Ward, whose population at the 2011 census was 18,294. Part of the village was designated as a conservation area in 2005, which listed an accurate population of 270 people in Micklethwaite in 1996.

References

Sources

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External links

{{commons category, Micklethwaite, Bingley Geography of the City of Bradford Villages in West Yorkshire