Cudworth (Upper and Lower) are adjoining villages, forming a township in the parish of Royston, but in the ecclesiastical parish of Monk Bretton, having a station on the Midland railway, 3 ½ miles east-north-east from Barnsley, the same distance south from Royston, and 185 ¼ from London, situated on an acclivity half a mile east from the station, on the Barnsley and Pontefract railway, in Upper Cudworth is a school-room, a Gothic building of stone, erected by subscription in 1849, and licensed for divine service, which is performed every Sunday evening by the Rev. Alfred Lambert, incumbent of Monk Bretton; here is also a township school for boys and girls, with an endowment of £20 a year, for which 20 of the scholars are taught reading and writing free. Here is also a Wesleyan Methodist chapel, and in Lower Cudworth one for Primitive Methodists. There are charities of £20 2s. yearly, distributed among the poor at Christinas. Here are stone quarries. Meyrick Bankes esq. is lord of the manor and chief landowner. The area is 1,744 acres; rateable value, £5,654 7s. 4d. and the population in 1861 was 521, and in 1871,657, and now 1,000.