1911 Census
We have started to transcribe the 1911 census and entries are now available for Kirkby Malham, Hanlith and Winterburn, with more to follow. We are still short of some earlier census year transcripts for some townships, notably Bell Busk, Coniston Cold and Eshton, volunteer transcribers would be most welcome.

Free web tools
We have created the KirkbyMalham.info Web Browser Toolbar especially for all family and local historians. It is packed full with useful weblinks to all our main pages and to a host of useful sites on the web. It works with most computers and web browsers, is completeley Free and Safe. Try it today and discover some very useful websites that you didn't know about.

Pennine Testimonies
The Wills & Probate Study Day that MLHG jointly hosted in Skipton was a great success. Chaired by Gordon Forster of Leeds University and editor of Northern History, over 50 delegates enjoyed four very interesting main lectures - In the Name of God Amen’: The Process of Probate in Yorkshire by Alan Petford; Craven Wills during the Tudor Reformations by Victoria Spence; Probate Documents and Vernacular Buildings by David Cant and Wills and Gossips by Dr George Redmonds. In addition they could attend one of a range of workshops including Family History and Wills by David Tippey of MLHG; Household & Husbandry Gear in North Craven Inventories by Sheila Gordon of North Craven Historical Research Group; Trade and Industry in Probate Documents of the Early Modern Period by Alan Petford of Saddleworth Historical Society or Researching Probate Documents in the Archives by Victoria Hoyle, Borthwick Institute, University of York. We currently have the notes for David Tippey's workshop on Wills for Family History available on this site.

Much New Data Available
April and early May have seen around 14 new sets of data become available on KirkbyMalham.info and our thanks go to the volunteer transcribers whose hard work has provided all the new material. The final checking of the Kirkby Malham Parish Record Index 1659-1811 is currently being undertaken and it is hoped to add this to the website soon. This will be followed by the 19th century parish records, which have also been transcribed, but still require checking.

Study Days for 2009
The new MLHG exhibition stand attracted a steady stream of visitors at the well attended, Historic Environment Day at Northallerton, on 21st Feb. The website attracted a lot of attention and application forms for the study days quietly disappeared from the table.

Study Days for 2009
The MLHG are involved in two study days with a local theme. If you want to come along, check out the relevant pages and book your place soon, as these are limited on both study days.
Quaker Study Day :-
The Airton Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends have organised a day in which MLHG are participating on Saturday 21st March. Quakers in Malhamdale : Historic & Personal Perspectives will present a series of talks exploring the roll of the Quakers in the area. A full programme and booking details are available on the Quakers in Malhamdale page.
Wills & Probate Study Day :-
In conjunction with the Hebden Bridge and Saddleworth Local History Societies, we are hosting a study day in Skipton on Saturday 4th July. Pennine Testimonies : Probate Documents from the Early Modern Period will consist of a series of talks and workshops exploring the use, interpretation and location of probate documents and their value as local and family history resources. Visit the Pennine Testimonies page for more details of the day and to download an application form.

Parish Records
The parish record transcription project is progressing well and the 19th century parish records have now been transcribed and are currently being checked. The Cookson Index has also been transcribed and it is hoped to make this available on the website sometime during the first half of 2009, depending on how fast the webmasters MYSQL database and programming skills improve. We still have a large quantity of other records which we want to digitise, so any additional volunteers would be welcome.

Domesday Book
The earliest written record to mention Malhamdale is the Great Domesday Book, completed in 1086, which is an impressive survey of the whole country south of the river Tees. For this area it provides an indication of how much land was in use and the names of those who held it.

Early Surname Resources
With the recent addition of more manorial documents to the website, those researching families in Malhamdale now have a number of resources that can provide information about their families before the first parish records appeared in 1597. Although they may not allow you to accurately construct your family tree during this earlier period, they do provide an indication of what some families were doing in the period from the 14th-17th centuries. They include: The Subsidy Roll (1379); Manorial court rolls (mid 16th C) and a rental (late 14th C); Index of York Wills (1389-1688); Feet of Fines (1486-1603); Kirkby Malham church Compotus (1455); Muster Roll (1539) and indexes with abstract of early deeds in the Serjeantson and Raistrick collections held at Skipton Library.

Quaker Records
To coincide with the refurbishment of the Airton Quaker Meeting House which is nearing completion, we have extended our Quaker pages to include: Where to find Airton Quaker Records; a List of Burials at Airton; the Monumental Inscriptions in Airton Burial Ground, including a plan and photographs; and a Brief History of the Airton Quaker Meeting.

Email & Bookmark pages
You can now find a link on every page which allows you to email the URL or bookmark the page on your own social bookmark list.

Search Tips
Analysis of our search records show that visitors don't always manage to get the best results when searching our site. This is usually due to overlong search requests or not allowing for the many spelling variations found in written records. To assist visitors in obtaining the best posssible results, we have compiled a few search tips:

Too Much Information :
Searches usually fail because too much information has been entered into the query. If the search doesn't find an entry that EXACTLY matches your search term it will not find the information you want, although it may still be on the website.

If you want to find Thomas Proctor born 1760 at Newhouses then putting all that into the search box is unlikely to find any likely candidates, so start with the minimum and just run a search for Proctor. If that provides too many matches for you to browse then add his first name and run a search for Thomas Procter to reduce the number of results.

Spelling Variations :
The second most common reason for a search to fail is because of spelling variations. These are very common and a surname my appear in a single document spelt in 2 or 3 different ways, the older the document, the more common this becomes. In the example above, Proctor is also very commonly spelt as Procter, and in some old documents as Prockter or other variants too.

The Sound-alike Matching feature in our search box doesn't find ProctOR entries if you enter a search for ProctER.
You can however use the wildcard character * to replace any single letter, so searching with the term Proct*r will find all the entries for both the common variations.
The * wildcard character replaces 1 or no letters, so a search for Smith* would find both Smith and Smithe and if you modified it to Sm*th* it would also find Smythe etc. too.

Quaker Records
The Quaker records held by The National Archives are now available online on the pay-to-view service BMDregisters, making it possible to find Birth, Marriage and Burial records for the Airton Meeting House. There is a free simple search, with Advanced searches costing 50p, you can then view a transcript or download the original document image, which costs £2.50. We have also updated the information on our Airton Quaker page and extended our Airton Burial Ground register.

Donation link repaired
For those who would like to encourage the work we are doing and help to support this website, you can once again do this using the donation buttons on our web pages. It is not necessary to have a PayPal account, you can use most credit or debit cards. You can of course also help provide us with funds at no additional cost to yourself, by purchasing goods through our Amazon shop.

Morrison Pit, Annfield Plain, Co. Durham. Does anyone know if this is named after the Morrison family? It was opened in 1869 and owned by the South Moor Coal Co by the 1890s.

Walter Morrison
The beta version of the new Walter Morrison pages are now available. Larger versions of the photographs have still to be added and more links too, but in the meantime enjoy reading about this interesting local character. We are still interested to learn more, so if you can add to this resource please contact us.

Airton & Scosthrop Census
The transcriptions have now been completed for all the years from 1841-1901 thanks to the efforts of Pat Berry and Mike Gomersall.

The Times archive
If you missed out on the recent free access to the Manchester Guardian online archive, you may like to check out The Times archive which covers the period 1785-1985. In it you will find some references to Malhamdale and to some of its more famous residents such as Walter Morrison MP. It is available at some public libraries, but you can get free access by becoming an online member of the Bedfordshire Libraries and then access it at home. There isn't a charge, just sign up and you will be instantly issued with a Library Card Number and a PIN which you can use to access the archive.

Walter Morrison
The recent research project about this interesting local character is currently being prepared for the website, look out for it from mid January.

Guardian Archive
The Manchester Guardian has covered many stories featuring Malhamdale and includes other interesting items such as details of sales and various advertisements for staff, services etc. The newly launched Guardian and Observer Archive is offering a free 24hr subscription to the service during November, and it is well worth trying. The Guardian section of the archive covers from 1821 to 1975 and has a very good Advanced Search facility to help locate the articles you want. You can also perform a "loose" search say for Malham and then search within those results. A simple search for Malham throws up nearly 300 items or you could search for a prominent local person such Walter Morrison or JW Morkill, there are many possibilities for spending a few hours browsing. Searching the archive is normally free, but viewing the extracts requires a subscription which costs just under £8 for 24hrs, with a 50% deduction for November if your free pass just isn't long enough. (The offer period is over but the 24 hour subscription still represents good value for money if you have a couple of hours to spare.)

New Parish Record Transcription Project
We now have permission to transcribe and publish the 19th century records of Baptism, Marriage and Burial for the parish church of St Michael the Archangel, Kirkby Malham. Copies of all the registers have been made, and now all we need are some volunteers! It is intended to run this as an online project, so anyone can participate from any part of the world. The webmaster is currently trying to sort out the technical bits and an information page for potential transcibers will be posted shortly. In the meantime would anyone interested in doing some transcription, even the odd page, please contact the Webmaster to register their interest and receive further details.

Cookson Index CD
Unfortunately most of the Kirkby Malham Parish Records covering the 16th-18th centuries were stolen in the 1970s, leaving us with only the YPRS transcript covering 1597-1690. There is a good collection of Bishop's Transcripts covering this period available at the Borthwick Institute and these have been partially transcribed and made available in the IGI at FamilySearch.org. Unfortunately a significant percentage of our entries are missing from the IGI, so the little known index created by the Rev Cookson is an invaluable aid to people working on the family history of Malhamdale families. This index was created when all the records were still available and covers from 1597-1813. Created manually, it isn't perfect, but it contains similar information to that shown in the IGI, but with many more entries. This may be because the IGI contains transcriptions of the Bishop's Transcripts, not the more complete original registers. The church has a typed transcript of the index and this is being made available in PDF format on CD, costing £15 incl. UK P&P. It will be available from mid November and a new purchase page will be set up.