Burley in Wharfedale History Trail
Burley Local History & Archive Group (BLH&AG)
20 plaques in 20 locations
First created in 2002, history content & images updated in 2022.
Plaque 1 - The Grange or Burley Grange
The Grange was built as a private house by John Peele Clapham in early 1840. The residence was originally surrounded by high walls. A section of this wall still remains, between the postbox and the St Mary’s Parish Centre on Station Road.
Extensive alterations were made to both the property and the grounds in the 1860s by the then owner Thomas Emsley, a wealthy landed gentleman. After the death of the subsequent owner, James Hodson, the house stood empty. The Burley Urban District Council bought the property in 1904 for £1660 and altered the building to provide a suite of offices. The high walls were removed and replaced with railings. The rear part of the property was used as a men’s social club, The Grange Club, which ran until 1992. The railing were removed during World War II during the drive to collect iron for munitions. The building was then used to host adult education courses by Bradford and Ilkley Community College. Bradford College vacated the Grange in 2006, and sold it to Alan Hayes in 2009. Hayes restored the building and converted the upper floors to apartments and the ground floor to offices and premises for independent businesses. |
Plaque 2 - Salem Congregational Chapel
The Salem Chapel was built in 1840 by the then owner of Burley Grange, John Peele Clapham.
Clapham had fallen out with the elders of the existing churches in Burley so built an independent chapel and associated church hall school room in the grounds of his home. Between the chapel and the hall is a graveyard, containing around 600 graves & the Clapham family tomb. |
Plaque 3 - The Lawn
The Lawn was built in the 1860s on the site of older property. It was first occupied by William Brayshaw, a stuff (worsted) manufacturer. To ensure privacy for its occupants, the
house and gardens were surrounded by high stone walls. In the 1920s it was owned by Walter Jackson. It came up for sale in 1956 and was acquired by Ilkley Urban District Council who converted it into sheltered accommodation for 23 elderly persons. Ten houses were built in the grounds and a pedestrian footpath (Lawn Walk) through the garden gave the village a public open space in its centre. Control of the property was passed to the Aire Wharfe Housing Trust after the turn of the century, and The Lawn was redeveloped to provide small apartments. |
Plaque 4 - Methodist Church
Methodism probably arrived in Burley in the mid-eighteenth century and in 1816 the Burley Wesleyan society built a chapel - now home to Cliffe House Day Nursery - which was then enlarged in 1832. As the chapel approached its 50th year, the congregation decided to build a new place of worship. The foundation stone of the current building was dedicated on June 7 1867.
The total cost, which included fitting out with pews, organ, stained glass window, heating and lighting, came to £3,700. The architects were Lockwood and Mawson who had also designed the Town Hall and Wool Exchange in Bradford. Five years later, the old chapel was refurbished as a Sunday School with room for 300 children. As a result of the Methodist Church Union Act, Primitive Methodists and Wesleyans became simply Methodists in 1933, but they continued to function seperately until 1967 when they merged and the church became the place of worship for all Burley Methodists. |
Plaque 5 - Village Green
When this area was the centre of the village much of what is now the Green was built-up.
There was a blacksmith opposite the Malt Shovel which remained in use until the 1930s. For some time afterwards the open area was not much more than wasteland, but between 1996 and 1999 was re-landscaped by the local community with the help of donations from businesses and fundraising efforts. As marked by a plaque at the entrance to the Green on the bend, this was site of a horrific incident in June 15 1944 when a covered lorry coming from Ilkley and transporting members of the 6th Canadian Infantry Reinforcement Unit failed to take the sharp bend at the Malt Shovel Hotel and crashed into 26 Main Street. The scene was described by an eye-witness as being “like a plane crash”. All but one of the 21 men in the lorry died. |
Plaque 6 - Burley House
Burley House was remodelled by the poet Thomas Maude in 1798. It is the only Grade 1 listed building in Burley. The 1851 census shows the owner as Lydia Anderton, 60, a widow and ‘gentlewoman’. Also resident was another woman, 39. They were looked after by 7 servants.
The house was then occupied by William Rouse Jnr and his family. He was the owner of William Rouse and Sons, a large worsted spinner in Bradford, and a man of some financial means as also living with him were his wife, 5 children and 6 servants, including a governess from Devon and a footman. Rouse was related to Thomas Emsley, who lived at Burley House, before buying the Grange around 1860. The 1871 census shows Mrs Rouse as widowed and lists the sons as having entered their father’s business. It is also interesting to note a visitor resident at the time, an Army Captain from the West Indies. In later years the house has been a private school, a hotel, a restaurant and office space. It was converted to apartments in 2018. |
Plaque 7 - Post Office Yard
The shop and cottages next to the church have previously been known as Hell’s Mouth and Elm Tree Place. The shop has been, at various times, a druggist, a greengrocer’s, a cobbler’s and an antique shop.
The 1851 census shows the shop as the Post Office. It appears the name Post Office Yard was adopted by local people as, by the next census in 1861, the name was used by the enumerator in his return. The name has remained ever since. At the time this was the most densely populated part of the village. Next to the windows of the former shop is a wooden post which was once part of the village stocks. The postbox at the site remains in use. |
Plaque 8 - St Mary's Parish Church
A ‘chapel of ease’ - a place of worship built for those who could not easily reach their parish church - stood on the site of St. Mary’s Parish Church in the 15th Century.
It was replaced by the Fairfax Chapel in the 17th Century. The church register dates from 1774. In 1841 the Fairfax Chapel was pulled down and a new foundation stone laid. Two years later the new church was opened and consecrated by the Bishop of Ripon. The church clock was set going on December 22 1855. In 1856 the church became a parish church with Dr Charles Ingham Black installed as its first parish priest. He is remembered for penning the words to the carol ’Twas In The Cold Winter and this is depicted in a memorial window. Other windows recall some of the church’s earlier benefactors. Changes have been made to the church over the years. Gas lighting was introduced in 1858 and, following a fire in 1870, the church was renovated with donations from the owners of Greenholme Mills, Fison and Forster, and the owner of The Grange, Thomas Emsley. In 1952 the stalls, pulpit and altar rail were replaced with ones from the workshop of renowned Yorkshire furniture maker Robert ‘Mouseman’ Thompson. |
Plaque 9 - Burley Hall
The current Burley Hall was built in 1832 and is at least the third hall to occupy this site. John Pulleyn built one hall in 1630.
By the 1740s the Lord of the Manor exercised important functions, including the right to appoint clergy to what became St Mary’s Parish Church. They also had shooting rights on Burley Moor. In 1795 the whole of Burley Manor was put up for auction by Thomas Pulleyn Mosley.
Two-thirds was bought by the Greenholme Mills partners, and included most of the properties in the village and land from Main Street to the mills. The remaining third, comprising Burley Hall, the Corn Mill, Burley Holme (the lands eastward from Burley Hall to near the present sewage works) and Burley Moor were bought by Matthew Wilson of Otley. Wilson then sold on the Hall to a relative, Reverend Thomas Fourness Wilson. Sadly, the Hall was destroyed by fire in 1822, eventually being rebuilt in the form we know it now 10 years later. After World War II Burley Hall was sold to the local authority for use as a residential home for the elderly. Still with the same function, it is now owned by BUPA. |
Plaque 10 - Corn Mill
John Clapham bought the old mill in 1902 and set up in business supplying local farmers with animal feed made from homegrown and imported grain. Flour was also milled and sold to local grocers.
The Corn Mill was converted to housing circa 2012, but John Clapham & Sons business continued in premises at the very end of Cornmill Lane. This is now housing too. |
Plaque 11 - Malt Shovel & Pudding Tree
The original Malt Shovel was a humble two-storey affair with a thatched roof. The opening of the rail line in 1865 led to increase in tourists to the area so, in an effort to capitalise on this, in 1880, the old buildings were replaced by a three-storey building that boasted, amongst other features, a large coffee room capable of seating 100, and an assembly room.
A 1904 advertisement talked of the hotel’s spacious bedrooms, choice wines and spirits, billiards, posting and cigars of the finest brands. In later years, the Malt Shovel operated as a pub and a bar and restaurant before being developed into housing in 2014. Next to the building is the site of the Pudding Tree where, up until 1787, an annual feast was held. There, a huge pudding consisting of 30 stones (just over 190kgs) of flour and the same weight of fruit was cooked, sold and eaten under the great elm tree. After it showed signs of being dangerously rotten, the Pudding Tree was felled on March 25 1970 and replaced with the sycamore tree that stands on the site today. The Pudding Tree Garden behind it was created by Burley Community Council in 1994. |
Plaque 12 - Dial House
Dial House, dated 1690, is one of the oldest remaining houses in the village. In the censuses of 1851 and 1861 the owner was landed proprietor Francis Smith. By 1871 it had moved into the hands of the first of three doctors to occupy the property, a William Murray from Paisley in Scotland. The second doctor to live there was Harold Hebblethwaite, listed as a surgeon in the 1891 census. He subsequently became the medical officer of health in Burley and resided in the house until the 1920s. He was followed by Dr Garscadden, another Scot, and former military doctor, who had a surgery inside the house. He also owned a surgery in Menston, where he moved in the 1960s.
Another surgery was established at Hill Top, at what is now the approach to the Rifle Club (Burley Social Club). This eventually moved to the current site on Grange Road. |
Plaque 13 - Iron Row
Built around 1800 by Greenwood & Whitaker for their workers at Greenholme Mills, Iron Row was previously called New Row. It is not clear why the name changed, but tradition has it that iron doors were added to the properties in the early 19th Century to protect them from attack by Luddites - bands of workers angry that new mill machinery was taking jobs.
The Luddites never actually never made it further than Addingham, where an attack on Low Mill in 1926 led to the deaths of three people. That event, however, put Burley on high alert with a request for protection put in to the Yorkshire Hussars in Leeds. In the 1851 Census there were 112 people recorded as living in the 20 cottages, with as little as 3 people in some and as many as 10 in others. |
Plaque 14 - Queens Hall
This was formerly the Lecture Hall and was built for the village by mill owners Wm Fison & Co., in 1868 as a place for recreational pursuits. The eastern end of the building was used as Greenholme Mills schools until 1897.
The building remained the property of Wm Fison & Co., until it was bought by the Burley Urban District Council in 1935 for £3,600. The two crosses standing in front of the hall were erected by the people of the village in remembrance of Wm Forster and Wm Fison. |
Plaque 15 - Red Lion
The Red Lion was originally a cottage-type inn. The 1851 Census tells us there was a resident brewer employed by the publican Elizabeth Brumfitt.
Whitakers Brewery, of Bradford, acquired the pub in 1891 and rebuilt it in the form we know it today in 1893. They owned it until 1959 when a business takeover saw it fall into the hands of Tetley’s of Leeds. The land behind the Red Lion was the venue for the Burley Feast, celebrated well into the 1920s. Organised by the Salem Chapel, it was held on the nearest Sunday to October 11th and featured a fair with roundabouts, swing boats and coconut shies. There were also competitions, a marquee for dancing and exhibitions. |
Plaque 16 - Peel Place
In 1856, premises for the Primitive Methodists were obtained in Peel Place. These were used until 1890 when a new chapel and adjoining school was built at the junction of Victoria Road and Sun Lane.
The building on Peel Place then became the Co-op for over 70 years, and is now home to a specialised joinery business. When the two Methodist societies merged in 1967 the Primitive Methodists began using the Methodist Church on Main Street and the Victoria Road building was sold to the West Riding County Council, who adapted it for use as a youth club. 4 Peel Place was the birthplace of William Watson. Born in 1858, but raised in Liverpool from the age of 2, he was a poet of some distinction and has a plaque of remembrance outside the Queens Hall. Victoria Hall, or Drill Hall as it was also known, was used for training volunteer soldiers before World War I. It was also used as a cinema in the 40s and 50s, but was demolished in the early 1960s. The scout hut is now on the same site. |
Plaque 17 - Station Road
This area of Burley has not changed much. The drinking fountain, which was donated to the village in 1885 by Francis Arnold-Forster, is still in pride of place today. It was given at the same time as the Burley Local Board of Health was providing a more extensive supply of clean water.
There was a grocery shop on the corner, which was owned by Samuel Smith. In 1903 the old grocery shop was modernised. These alterations consisted of large new windows with wrought iron tracery which are still present today. In 1919 a Victory Celebration Arch was built at the bottom of Station Road to celebrate the end of the war. Leeds Corporation trolley buses had a turning point at the bottom of Station Road and Main Street between 1915 and 1928, where they turned to make the return journey to the tramshed at White Cross, Guiseley - now home to apartments and a gym. |
Plaque 18 - Burley Schools
The listed building tucked away off Main Street is referred to as The Old Grammar School although there is no hard evidence that it ever was such. The design, however, is similar to other school buildings of the 17th and 18th Centuries. It served as the Parish Rooms for many years before the construction of the modern building on Station Road.
Other buildings in the village have been used for Burley schools. The earliest recorded day school in Burley was the Township School, which was built in 1817 and paid for by public subscription. Within a year the school had 50 pupils during the week, and as many as 150 on Sundays, where the Wesleyans ran a Sunday School. The Township School originally occupied part of the Mechanics’ Institute site at the junction of Main Street and Station Road, but was demolished by Thomas Emsley of The Grange in the 1860s and replaced with a new school building behind the terraced houses next to the chemist’s on Main Street. The exterior of the building remains much the same as when it was built in 1862 and is now used as business and private accommodation - please do not trespass on the property while following the History Trail. Greenholme Mills School - originally within the mills, moved to one end of the Lecture Hall (Queen's Hall) on Main Street. |
The Church of England (CofE) National School on Aireville Terrace was built in 1898 to replace the old school of 1837 on Back Lane and could accommodate 500 infant and primary pupils.
The original Wesleyan Chapel on Main Street was adapted as a non-denominational school in 1867. It was enlarged in 1898 to take up to 300 primary-aged children and the Township School took the infants. Salem Congregational Church also had its own school in its church hall, behind the Queen's Head on Main Street. In 1873 it was enlarged to take upto 300 children. The Primitive Chapel school on Victoria Road and Sun Lane was built in 1914. By 1950 all the schools were combined and most children went to Aireville Terrace. The Aireville school site was sold off in 2000 and the buildings and grounds turned over to housing. Two more modern school buildings now cater for the village’s reception to Year 6 children, Burley Oaks on Langford Lane (formally the Middle School) and Burley and Woodhead Church of England School on Sandholme Drive - a replacement for Burley Woodhead School at the top of Moor Lane. Ghyll Royd School on the roundabout at the Ilkley end of the village is an independent prep school for 2 to 11 year-olds. It moved from Ilkley to its current home in Greystone Manor in 1999. |
Plaque 19 - Grange Road
Grange Road runs parallel to Main Street and along the back of the first four of our historical sites, ending at the Village Green.
Burley Library opened in 1974, replacing the one in Burley Grange. One of the first libraries in the village was in Greenholme Mills, established even before its best-known owners Fison and Forster took over in 1848. There was another in the Mechanics Institute which stood roughly where the fountain is at bottom of Station Road. The Institute was built around 1816 and demolished in 1860. The Grange Park Medical Centre opened in 1984. With a bowling club established after World War II, the present crown green was constructed in 1952. The Postlethwaite Pavilion - opened in 2020 and named in remembrance of longstanding member Philip Postlethwaite - replaced the Shakespeare Memorial Pavilion from 1964. Burley in Wharfedale Cricket Club (Cricket History) has been in existence since the 1850s. It led a nomadic existence before Burley in Wharfedale Sports Club of which the cricket is a section, bought Hodson Park in 1924. The Park, which occupied a much larger site than the Cricket Club now sits on, was also home to Burley in Wharfedale AFC (Football History). Victoria Park (the park next to the Scout Hut), the Recreation Ground and Walton Park (also known as the Clarence Cricket Ground, and situated where the Generous Pioneer once stood) were used at various stages between 1850 and 1924. Even Menston’s ground was used for a season after World War I. The club has played in the Airedale and Wharfedale League since 1908. A wooden pavilion was used until 1937 when it was replaced by the current brick-built one, which cost £650. |
Plaque 20 - Burley Railway Station
1865 saw the opening of the Otley & Ilkley Joint Railway Line and Burley Station, station buildings, a goods yard and two water towers. By the early 1900s the station would have employed around 13 staff, working in two shifts. There would have been a station master and his assistant, and, on each shift, a booking clerk, goods clerk, parcel porter, two platform porters and a signalman. The station dealt with goods as well as passengers. There were goods sidings on
the site of the houses at The Robins. A coal siding was situated on the Hag Farm Road side of the station. The station became very popular and by the 1920s saw as many as 60 trains a day stopping there. At the time, the line ran to Bolton Abbey, and members of the Royal Family would pass through the station on their way to join shooting parties there. As road traffic increased, the line’s importance for goods and passengers declined. In 1963 the whole of the line was slated for closure. By 1965 all that remained were the Ilkley to Bradford and Leeds sections which became known as the Wharfedale Line. The station buildings were closed, then demolished in 1973. Electrification came to the line in 1995, but old-fashioned ‘slam-door’ carriages with manually operated doors continued to be used on the line until 2001, by which time they were 35 years-old. These were eventually replaced with trains with automatic doors. |
Other Places of Interest in Burley District
GREENHOLME MILLS
With the arrival of the Industrial Revolution and the building of Greenholme Mills, Burley saw its population soar. The mills, powered by water channeled from the River Wharfe along The Goit and into channels under the mill, produced cotton fabric from 1790 to 1850. When Wm Fison & Co., took over the two mills they converted them to worsted fabric production. They were unusual in the area as they handled the whole process of turning raw sheep’s wool into finished fabric. The first Greenholme Mill, or Old Mill, was at the site now occupied by the Burley Hydro Scheme hydroelectric power plant. After the Old Mill’s closure, the New Mill took on the Greenholme Mills name. There were originally two large mill buildings, but one was lost following a devastating fire in 1966. Following its closure in 1968, the building was used as industrial units. In 2020 work started on converting the whole site into housing. |
WHARFESIDE, LEATHERBANK LANE
Built by William E. Forster, after he and William Fison purchased Greenholme Mills. It was here that Forster, his wife Jane and their 4 adopted children were said to have spent their happiest years. |
SCALEBOR PARK
Scalebor Park Hospital was built on part of the estate of the old Scalebor Hall by West Riding County Council at a cost of £126,000. It housed 210 fee paying psychiatric patients, 105 of each sex from the whole of the West Riding. The property covered 120 acres. After World War II it became an NHS hospital. The hospital closed in the 1990s and the site was re-developed for housing, with some of the original hospital buildings being repurposed. |
Burley Community Library & Burley Archive, Grange Road, Burley in Wharfedale, West Yorkshire England LS29 7HD
Please refer to the Home page for up-to-date opening times. Closed Wednesday & Sunday
Burley Local History & Archive Group: Drop-In Sessions Friday 2.30pm to 4.30pm. For other times please contact us
Burley Local History & Archive Group: Drop-In Sessions Friday 2.30pm to 4.30pm. For other times please contact us