Bowling St Bartholomew, Yorkshire Family History Guide

Bowling St Bartholomew is an Ecclesiastical Parish in the county of Yorkshire, created in 1843 from Bradford St Peter Ancient Parish.

Alternative names:

Bradford St John the Evangelist, Wakefield Road
Bolling
Bowling with Dudley Hill

Parish church:

Parish registers begin:

Parish registers: 1842
Bishop’s Transcripts: None

Nonconformists include: Primitive Methodist and Wesleyan Methodist.

Table of Contents

Adjacent Parishes

Parish History

The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales 1870

BOWLING, a village, a township, two chapelries, and a subdistrict, in the parish and district of Bradford, W. R. Yorkshire.

The village stands adjacent to the Bradford and Halifax railway, 1½ mile SSW of Bradford, and has a station on the railway. The Bowling Iron-Works, which furnished many supplies to Government during the war in the Crimea, are adjacent.

The township includes also the village of Dudley-Hill. Acres, 1,545. Real property, £36,691; of which £250 are in mines, and £5,300 in iron-works. Pop. in 1841, 8,918; in 1861, 14,494. Houses, 3,160. The property is divided among a few. Bowling Hall is the seat of the Sturge family; and was the head-quarters of the Earl of Newcastle, in 1642, on occasion of his victory over Fairfax on Adwalton-Moor.

The inhabitants are employed variously in the iron-works, in the cloth trade, in stone quarries, and in coal and iron mines.

The chapelries are Bowling-St. John, constituted in 1843, and Bowling-St. Stephen, constituted in 1860. Pop., 3,488 and 1,297. The living of St. J. is a vicarage, that of St. S. a p. curacy in the dio. of Ripon. Value of St. John, £175; of St. Stephen, £120. Patron of St. J., the Vicar of Bradford; of St. S., Hardy, Esq. The church of St. J. is good; and that of St. S. was built in 1861, and is in the early decorated style, with tower and spire.

An Independent chapel, in the Romanesque style, was built in 1865; and there are other dissenting chapels.

Source: The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales [Wilson, John M]. A. Fullarton & Co. N. d. c. [1870-72].

A Topographical Dictionary of England 1848

BOWLING, a chapelry, in the parish and union of Bradford, wapentake of Morley, W. riding of York, 1 mile (S. E.) from Bradford; containing 8918 inhabitants.

The township is situated on the slope of a hill on the east side of Low Moor, and comprises by computation 1438 acres, of which by far the greater portion is pasture; the surface is varied, and the surrounding scenery in some parts enlivened with plantations. Boiling or Bowling Hall is a stately and spacious mansion of venerable aspect.

The substratum abounds with coal and iron-ore, which have been wrought for more than half a century by the Bowling Iron Company, whose works here are among the most extensive in England: the accumulated heaps of refuse from the mines, forming huge mounds surrounding the excavations, have been planted with trees.

The village consists chiefly of one long street, rising by a gradual ascent from the town of Bradford to Dudley Hill, on the Wakefield road; the houses are of stone and well built, and there are numerous clusters of modern cottages inhabited chiefly by persons employed in the iron-works.

The chapel, dedicated to St. John, and consecrated in Feb. 1842, was erected at the sole expense of the Iron Company, at a cost of £4000; it is a handsome structure in the later English style, with a square embattled tower and wellproportioned spire, and contains 1000 sittings, of which 300 are free. The living is a perpetual curacy; net income, £150; patron, the Vicar of Bradford. There are places of worship for Primitive Methodists and Wesleyans.

Source: A Topographical Dictionary of England by Samuel Lewis 1848