Malhamdale Local History Group

Providing an extensive range of information for both local and family historians.

Forthcoming meetings, usually held at 7:30pm (post Spring AGM 2020) in Malham Village Hall unless specifically stated otherwise. There are plans to make use of Kirkby Malham village Hall once lockdown restrictions are lifted during 2021 as this will allow better social distancing. Visitors are most welcome.

Forthcoming meetings: Updated 27/7/21

Friday 21/5/21 Walter Morrison - an introduction to launch the Walter Morrison festival, talk by Robin Bundy on Zoom.

Link to this talk which has now been posted on Youtube: https://youtu.be/WIhHlwjEQpg

19/8/21 7:30 pm in Kirkby Malham Parish Hall - '2000 years of shoes' , presented by Dan Nelson. Refreshments available after the meeting. Dan comes from seven generations of shoemakers dating from 1752 (two in Cononley, then five in Settle) and is one of Yorkshire’s last remaining bespoke shoemakers. Dan is able to recreate shoes from different periods of history and makes his own footwear for his hobby of re-enacting battles that took place on English soil, such as the Battle of Towton.

Thursday 16th September – “The Druids’ Altar” - a talk by Dr Roger Martlew. (This small stone circle can be found on the edge of Malham Moor).

Thursday 21st October – “Charity, The Poor laws and the Workhouse” – a talk by Dr Mike Winstanley.

Thursday 18th November – “In Grandmother’s Footsteps” – a light hearted look at Yorkshire dialect – A talk by Alan Hemsworth.

If you don't own a laptop, or want something more compact to carry around, organise your family history record keeping in a compact Filofax style binder with our free family history record sheet masters. (This is now historical in its own right! Younger historians may need to check out the meaning of 'Filofax' on their tablet or mobile)

Visit our Family History Search Page to find some useful resources for tracing your Malhamdale ancestors.

Visiting Malhamdale: to view historical sites, get a 'feel' for the landscape and talk to residents about local history - one of the best ways to learn about the past!

Click here to find out about visiting Malhamdale

(link to be developed Oct'19)

Views of Malhamdale in old postcards

The group also has a dedicated area on this website where you can find general information about its activities and projects, which include: Education in Malhamdale; Malhamdale at War; the history of Malhamdale Show, Walter Morrison - A man of many parts.

Discussion Forum

Sorry Forum out of Order at October 2019
Contact Us with your Comments or Questions via our Discussion Forum and we will do our best to help.

The forum has an RSS feed (What is an RSS feed?) so that you can subscribe for news of the latest topics direct to your PC. There are plenty of free RSS readers available and most modern web browsers allow you to access RSS feeds ie. the Live Bookmarks feature on FireFox, which will ask you if you want to subscribe when you visit an RSS feed page. RSS links usually appear with this symbol which will take you to our Forum feed. Click the link to view the feed or drag it to your RSS reader.

You can see this RSS feed on the right, displayed in our free downloadable Widget (Win & Mac) which you can use if you don't already have an RSS reader program installed. The widget also provides feeds with content from the What's New page so that you can really keep up-to-date with changes on the site, and it also offers a feed from the Rootsweb mailing list ENG-YKS-CRAVEN.

Read our introduction to RSS feeds and how to access them and feel free to join in and leave your comments or questions on the Forum, where you may well find someone with just the information you are looking for.

What you will find here: We offer an extensive range of information of interest to local and family historians, plus lots of links to other relevant sites too.

Information is divided into groups under the local township names for easy navigation. Just select the Village that interests you from the navigation buttons and see what is available.

The site is based on the historic ecclesiastical Parish of Kirkby in Malhamdale, but we also have some information on other nearby townships that fit socially and geographically within the area (Coniston Cold, Eshton, Winterburn and Bordley).

Don't forget to look at the Malhamdale page for more general information about the area.

The dedicated Malhamdale Local History Group section contains an interesting variety of projects for you to look at, plus full information about the group's activities.

Quick Search will rapidly find references to family names or places, with advanced search options available on the main Search page, however it doesn't search our Malhamdale People Finder database or the Forum, so these need to be searched separately.

New pages and more information are being added frequently, so remember to check the What's New page or subscribe to our RSS feed.

If you have any queries or comments visit our Forum and leave us a message.

We are always interested in more Memories, Photographs, Maps, Deeds, Documents, Family Trees and other items relating to the area.
Don't worry, you don't have to create the actual web pages, the webmaster will sort out your text and illustrations into a web article, so contact mlhgenquiries@gmail.com to discuss your ideas. We also need more volunteers to transcribe material to go on the website. If you feel you can help please get in touch.