Cottingley is a
suburb
A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area. They are oftentimes where most of a metropolitan areas jobs are located with some being predominantly residential. They can either be denser or less densely populated ...
an village within the
City of Bradford
Bradford (), also known as the City of Bradford, is a metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. It is named after its largest settlement, Bradford, but covers a larger area which includes the towns and villages of Keighley, Shipley, Wes ...
district in
West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire is a Metropolitan counties of England, metropolitan and Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It borders North Yorkshire to the north and east, South Yorkshire and De ...
, England between
Shipley and
Bingley
Bingley is a market town and civil parish in the metropolitan borough of the City of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. It is sited on the River Aire and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. The town had a population of 18,040 at the United Kingdom ...
. It is known for the
Cottingley Fairies
The Cottingley Fairies are the subject of a hoax which purports to provide evidence of the existence of fairies. They appear in a series of five photographs taken by Elsie Wright (1901–1988) and Frances Griffiths (1907–1986), two young co ...
, which appeared in a series of photographs taken there during the early 20th century.
Etymology
The village is first 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 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...
of 1086 as ''Cotingelai'' in the wapentake of
Skyrack and the lands of Erneis of Buron. The first element is the
personal name
A personal name, full name or prosoponym (from Ancient Greek ''prósōpon'' – person, and ''onoma'' –name) is the set of names by which an individual person or animal is known. When taken together as a word-group, they all relate to that on ...
''Cotta'' (the origin of which is unknown), and the second the suffix ''-ingas'' denoting a group of associated people. Thus the ''Cottingas'' were a group descended from or otherwise associated with someone called Cotta. This group name was then compounded with the Old English word ''lēah'' ('open land in a wood'). Thus the name once meant 'the clearing of the descendants of Cotta'.
History
The village was clustered around the original St Michael's Church,
Cottingley Town Hall and the Sun Inn. This village was from Bingley, with Cottingley Bridge a mile closer.
In 1917, two girls, 15-year old Elsie Wright and nine-year old Frances Griffiths, claimed to have photographed fairies in the dell (Cottingley Beck) at the bottom of their garden. This led to the
Cottingley Fairies
The Cottingley Fairies are the subject of a hoax which purports to provide evidence of the existence of fairies. They appear in a series of five photographs taken by Elsie Wright (1901–1988) and Frances Griffiths (1907–1986), two young co ...
hoax, which still resonates in the village into the modern day. The village has a festival to celebrate the story (Cottingley Fairy Fest), and in 1997, parts of a film inspired by the story, ''
FairyTale: A True Story'', were filmed in the village.
Governance
Cottingley is part of Bingley Rural Ward on Bradford City Council and part of the
Parliamentary constituency of Shipley, represented since 2024 by the Labour MP
Anna Dixon
Anna Dixon is a British Labour Party politician who has been Member of Parliament for Shipley since 2024.
Education and career
Dixon was educated at Ilkley Grammar School in West Yorkshire. . At the 2011 Census,
Bingley Rural Ward, which includes
Cullingworth,
Denholme
Denholme is a town and civil parish in the Bradford Metropolitan Borough, West Yorkshire, England. It is west of Bradford, from Keighley and roughly the same distance from Halifax. Administratively, it is part of the Bingley Rural ward of ...
,
Harden and
Wilsden, had a population of 17,895.
Geography
The village is in the Aire Valley between
Shipley and
Bingley
Bingley is a market town and civil parish in the metropolitan borough of the City of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. It is sited on the River Aire and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. The town had a population of 18,040 at the United Kingdom ...
approximately above sea level with the
River Aire
The River Aire is a major river in Yorkshire, England, in length. Part of the river below Leeds is canalised, and is known as the Aire and Calder Navigation.
The ''Handbook for Leeds and Airedale'' (1890) notes that the distance from Malha ...
to the north.
The road through the village has been changed at least twice. Originally, to exit south from Bingley, travellers had to cross
Ireland Bridge then
Beckfoot Bridge and approach Cottingley on the south side of the river. The bridge across the River Aire leading towards Bingley was built by 1649, when it appears in the ''Book of Bridges in the Session Rolls of Wakefield.'' It was recorded in 1664 that "a great floode hath taken away the foundations so that the whole bridge is shrunke." Cottingley Bridge was rebuilt and in the early 19th century, it was a hamlet independent of Cottingley.
The
A650 road is now to the north of Cottingley after a bypass was built and opened in 2003. The land to the east of the
B6269 is mainly flat and to the west rises to a height of at March Cote Farm.
Cottingley
beck
Beck David Hansen (born Bek David Campbell; July 8, 1970), known mononymously as Beck, is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He rose to fame in the early 1990s with his Experimental music, experimental and Lo-fi mus ...
cuts a deep, narrow, rocky channel flowing north to the River Aire.
Although the road, railway and the
Leeds and Liverpool Canal
The Leeds and Liverpool Canal is a canal in Northern England, linking the cities of Leeds and Liverpool.
Over a distance of , crossing the Pennines, and including 91 locks on the main line. The Leeds and Liverpool Canal has several small branc ...
are on the opposite side of the Aire Valley to Cottingley, Parliament was asked to consider making the Aire Navigable from Cottingley to Shipley.
The village lies on
Millstone Grit
Millstone Grit is any of a number of coarse-grained sandstones of Carboniferous age which occur in the British Isles. The name derives from its use in earlier times as a source of millstones for use principally in watermills. Geologists refer to ...
and there are coal deposits, some bands and seams up to thick. Old mine shafts litter the fields either side of Cottingley Cliffe Road shown as either Old Coal Pits or Coal pits on the 1852 map, and one is listed as ''Cottingley Moor Bottom'' as having closed in 1860.
Amenities
There are two churches in the village; St Mary and St Monica is the Catholic church and the Church of St Michael and All Angels is the Anglican Church. St Michaels and All Angels was part of a regeneration project that spent £4.5 million, which included meeting rooms, a doctor's surgery, nursery and youth facilities and 50 new homes. The project started because a 1960s war memorial had been vandalised, and reports in the press caught the eye of Prince Charles, who came to speak at the grand unveiling.
The village has a primary school on Cottingley Moor Road, rated ''Good'' by OFSTED, and a secondary school,
Dixons Cottingley Academy. Cottingley Town Hall, which is now
grade II listed
In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, H ...
, celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2015.
Notable residents
*
Dominic Brunt
Dominic Adam Brunt (born 15 April 1970) is an English actor, director and producer, best known for portraying the role of Paddy Kirk in the ITV (TV channel), ITV soap opera ''Emmerdale''. For his role as Paddy, Brunt has been nominated in variou ...
– lived in the house of the Cottingley Fairy hoax in the early 2000s
*Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths (Cottingley Fairies girls)
* Professor
Deborah Dunn-Walters, an immunologist and Professor of Immunology who provided the government with advice during the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...
.
Other notes
* ''Cottingley Hall'' is shown on the 1908 map near the site of Cottingley Manor Park. On the 1852 map it is Cottingley House. (As Cottingley Hall bore the date 1659 RAF (Robert & Anne Ferrand) together with the Knights double cross, Cottingley House and Cottingley Hall are different names for the same property.)
* Cottingley also had a reservoir managed by Cottingley Water Works Co. This is shown above Manor Farm (now March Cote Lane) on the local map of 1908.
See also
*
Listed buildings in Bingley
Bingley is a civil parish in the metropolitan borough of the City of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. It contains 102 Listed building#England and Wales, listed buildings that are recorded in the National Heritage List for England. Of these, ...
References
Sources
*
*
External links
Cottingley.Net– The Cottingley Network
Cottingley Connect– non commercial site charting Cottingley village from Domesday to present day including the Cottingley fairy story
.
{{authority control
Villages in West Yorkshire
Geography of the City of Bradford