Birstall, West Riding

Description
Birstall, a village and the head of a civil parish comprising 12 ecclesiastical parishes in the W. R. Yorkshire. It has a station on the L. & N.W.R., and a post, money order, and telegraph office under Leeds. Area of urban sanitary district, 1233 acres; population, 6528; of the ecclesiastical parish of Birstall St Peter, 4286. Many of the inhabitants are employed in numerous factories or in handicrafts connected with them, and not a few are miners of coal and ironstone. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Wakefield; gross value, £400 with residence. Patron, the Bishop of Wakefield. The church was rebuilt in 1866. The tower is supposed to date from the llth century. There are several dissenting chapels. Dr Priestley, Unitarian writer and natural philosopher, was a native.