West Witton, Yorkshire Genealogy

Guide to West Witton, Yorkshire ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
WITTON, WEST, a parish, in the union of Leyburn, wapentake of Hang-West, N. riding of York, 4½ miles (W.) from Middleham. It includes the hamlet of Swinethwaite. There is a place of worship for Roman Catholics.

West Witton St Bartholomew is an Ancient Parish in the county of Yorkshire. Other places in the parish include: Swinethwaite, Temple, and Swinithwaite. The church of ST. BARTHOLOMEW consists of a chancel measuring internally 34 ft. by 16 ft., north vestry, nave 42 ft. by 17 ft. 3 in., north aisle 9 ft. 6 in. wide, west tower 6 ft. 9 in. by 6 ft. 1 in. and south porch. The whole edifice has been almost entirely rebuilt. The windows of the chancel and the chancel arch are modern. On the north side an archway opens to the organ chamber and a doorway leads into the vestry. The nave has a modern arcade of three bays on the north side, and on the south three two-light cinquefoiled modern windows and a south doorway. The north aisle is lighted by three square-headed windows of two cinquefoiled lights, and the organ chamber by one of a single light. The tower is in one stage without string-courses or buttresses and dates probably from the 16th century; there is an embattled parapet with pinnacles at the angles, and the bell chamber windows, which are square-headed and have labels, are of two long trefoil-ed lights. The tower arch is plain and pointed, and the west window has two uncusped pointed lights within a square head and an external label. The walling of the aisle is of old rubble; high up at the west end is a blocked window. The rest of the church is modern, and is built of coursed rubble without buttresses. The porch is also modern and contains a molded pointed doorway of which some jamb stones are old. The bells in the tower are three in number, all modern, but in the church is one inscribed in Lombardic characters 'a b c d e f g,' and one of very early shape with no date or inscription. The plate consists of two cups of 1662 presented by Christopher Norton, 1677, and two thick flat patens of the same date, a modern silver flagon and two pewter flagons. The registers begin in 1578.

From: 'Parishes: West Witton', A History of the County of York North Riding: Volume 1 (1914), pp. 286-290. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=64755 Date accessed: 20 May 2011.

In 1870-72, John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described West Witton like this:

WITTON (West), a parish, with a village, in Leyburn district, N. R. Yorkshire; 4 miles WSW of Leyburn r. station. It has a post-office under Bedale. Acres, 3,715. Real property, £4,696; of which £60 are in quarries. Pop. in 1851, 550; in 1861, 659. Houses, 145. The increase of pop. arose from the opening of a lead mine. The property is much subdivided. An ancient castle of Ralph Fitz-Randal was here, and has left some vestiges. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Ripon. Value, £103. Patron, Lord Bolton. The church is ancient but good. There are chapels for Wesleyans and Roman Catholics, a national school, and charities £31.

Civil Registration
Birth, marriages and deaths were kept by the government, from July 1837 to the present day. The civil registration article tells more about these records. There are several Internet sites with name lists or indexes. A popular site is FreeBMD.

Online Records
Online data content from chapelry registers of West Witton exists at some of the following websites and for the specified ranges of years:

To find the names of the neighboring parishes, use England Jurisdictions 1851. In this site, search for the name of the parish, click on the location "pin", click Options and click List contiguous parishes.

Poor Law Unions
Leyburn Poor Law Union, Yorkshire

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Yorkshire Probate Records to find the name of the court having primary jurisdiction. Scroll down in the article to the section Court Jurisdictions by Parish.

Maps and Gazetteers
Maps are a visual look at the locations in England. Gazetteers contain brief summaries about a place.


 * England Jurisdictions 1851
 * Vision of Britain