WARLEY, situated on an eminence, is a township in the parish of Halifax, and a polling place for the Northern division of the Riding, 3 miles west from Halifax, 1 ½ miles north-west from Sowerby Bridge station, in Morley wapentake, Halifax union and county court district, Halifax rural deanery, Craven archdeaconry and diocese of Ripon. Luddenden brook divides the townships of Midgley and Warley. A part of Warley township and a small portion of Skircoat was in 1878 formed into an ecclesiastical parish from Christ Church, Sowerby Bridge: the other parts of this township are ecclesiastically connected with Sowerby Bridge, Luddenden and Luddenden Foot. The church of St. John the Evangelist, situated at Cote Hill, is a handsome stone building, erected in 1877 at a cost of £4,000, raised by subscription, and is in the Early English style, consisting of chancel, nave and south aisle, with organ chamber and vestry on south side. The register dates from the year 1878. The living is a vicarage, yearly value £127, in the gift of the vicar of Halifax, and held by the Rev. James Holmes, of St. Bees, who resides at Sowerby Bridge. The chapels are for Congregationalists at Warley Town, for Calvinists at Butts Green, and for Primitive Methodists at Cote Hill. Druidical remains have been found on a swampy common, called Saltonstall Moor. There are quarries and several worsted manufactories in the neighbourhood. The poor of Luddenden have £31 yearly from John Appleyard’s charity. Sackville Walter Lane Fox esq. is lord of the manor, and Captain Dearden and Joseph Laycock esq. are the chief landowners, but the greater portion of this township is in the hands of a numerous body of small freeholders. The land is chiefly pasture, with a considerable extent of moorland. The chief crop is grass. The area is 4,025 acres, of which 2,430 are enclosed; rateable value, £31,060; population in 1871, 7,682.

Schools

There is a National school in union with Midgley, & partly endowed; also one at Cote hill in connection with St. John, accommodating 217 children, erected by subscriptions in 1872, at a cost of £1,000.

Board, Warley Town, Brook Rowley, master.

St. John’s, National, Cote hill, George Ashmore, master.

The Board school, Wainstalls, with master’s house, was built at a cost of £2,300, & will hold 225 children; Albert Samuel White, master.