Batley, West Riding

Description
Batley, a municipal town a township, and a borough partly comprised within the parliamentary borough of Dewsbury, and a parish in the W. R. of Yorkshire. The town adjoins the L. & N.W.R., Leeds and Manchester section, and has a station here. the G.N.R. also has a station here on their line from Bradford to Leeds, Ossett, and Wakefield. It is a manufacturing town, and has a post, money order, and telegraph office, banks, town-hall a market-house, erected in 1878, a cottage hospital, enlarged in 1883, a working man's club, and Liberal and Conservative clubs. The township includes also the hamlets of Brownhill, Carlinghow, Clark-Green, Havercroft, Chapel-Fold, Healey, Staincliffe, White Lee, Kilpin-Hill, Purlwell, Upper Batley, and part of Batley-Carr. Acreage of township and municipal borough, 2039 ; population, 28,719. The parish includes also the townships of Morley, Cildersome, and Churwell. The Earl of Wilton is lord of the manor and chief landowner. The manufacture of cloths, carpets, and other fabrics from shoddy, or-the reduced substance of old woollen rags, is here carried on to a great extent, and there are a large number of factories. There are also machine works, iron foundries, collieries, and quarries of building stone. The Corporation Waterworks comprise the Yateholme, Riding Wood, Ramsden, and Staincliffe reservoirs, having an aggregate capacity of 235,000,000 gallons. Public baths were opened in 1893. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Wakefield; net value, £375. Patrons, alternately the Countess of Cardigan and the Earl of Wilton. The church is Later English. The vicarage of St Thomas is a separate charge, constituted in 1868. The vicarages of Morley and Gildersome, and the perpetual curacies of Staincliffe, Morley (St Paul's), Carlinghow (St John's), Brownhill (St Saviour's), and Bruntcliffe (St Andrews), are also separate. There are a handsome Congregational chapel of 1856, an elegant Wesleyan chapel of 1861, four other dissenting chapels, a Roman Catholic church of 1870, an endowed grammar school, a higher grade school for girls, opened in 1893 at Field Hill, an excellent technical school, a workhouse, and considerable charities. There is a chamber of commerce wliich meets monthly.