Illingworth, West Yorkshire
Encyclopedia
Illingworth is a village within the Metropolitan Borough of Calderdale
Calderdale
The Metropolitan Borough of Calderdale is a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, England, through which the upper part of the River Calder flows, and from which it takes its name...

, in West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire is a metropolitan county within the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England with a population of 2.2 million. West Yorkshire came into existence as a metropolitan county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972....

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

.

It is situated 3.3 miles (5.3 km) north-west of Halifax
Halifax, West Yorkshire
Halifax is a minster town, within the Metropolitan Borough of Calderdale in West Yorkshire, England. It has an urban area population of 82,056 in the 2001 Census. It is well-known as a centre of England's woollen manufacture from the 15th century onward, originally dealing through the Halifax Piece...

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The village of Illingworth has competitive sports teams within the area including Crossleys Juniors (football), Illingworth C.C. (cricket
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

) and Illingworth A.R.L.F.C. (rugby league
Rugby league
Rugby league football, usually called rugby league, is a full contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular grass field. One of the two codes of rugby football, it originated in England in 1895 by a split from Rugby Football Union over paying players...

) who play at Mason Green in the Pennine League
Pennine League
The Pennine Amateur Rugby League, or Pennine League is a rugby league competition for amateur open-age clubs that runs from September to April. The clubs are drawn from West Yorkshire, North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and the east of Lancashire....

.

The village also has the former Illingworth Gaol and village stocks. The gaol has an inscription above the door giving the date as 1823 of when it was built. It had four cells. In June 2009, it was advertised for sale by auction
Auction
An auction is a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bid, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder...

 http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~calderdalecompanion/i.html.

Illingworth is one of the Halifax villages that have all become suburbs through urban expansion. Situated on the side and top of a hill, this is an exposed area, and feels cooler than lower down districts.

An ancient settlement, many old buildings remain, but many have unfortunately been lost including the old Talbot public house, demolished in the 1930s for a new building to be erected, in a Tudor style with stained glass windows. This in turn has been demolished in 2009.

The Commercial Inn, now on its site, has some attractive mews style private housing.

The old village smithy stands derelict.
In the 1970s, some ancient cottages were lost on Church Terrace, as were some farmsteads on the upper west of Keighley Road to make way for the Abbey Park social housing scheme. This soon became recognised as a failed housing experiment with social problems, and has been demolished to make way for attractive private sector housing.

Housing in Illingworth includes a mixture of social housing: the Halifax council built their estates towards the north of Halifax and more recently new private housing.

Illingworth is on the whole in an attractive setting, the countryside is never far away, and there are many ancient buildings, but the village centre has witnessed severe deterioration of the environment with the aforesaid demolitions of the two public houses, and the "tram shelter". which gave a focal point on Wrigley Hill.
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