Horsforth was recorded in the
Domesday Book of 1086 as
Horseford,
Horseforde,
Hoseforde; but late-ninth-century coins with the legend
ORSNA FORD and
OHSNA FORD may have come from Horsforth. The name derives from Old English
hors or, to judge from the coins, *
horsa ('horse') in the genitive plural form
horsa/
horsna +
ford '
ford', thus meaning 'horses' ford'. This refers to a river crossing on the
River Aire (possibly at
Newlay), that was subsequently used to transport woollen goods to and from
Pudsey,
Shipley and
Bradford. The original ford was situated off Calverley Lane, but was replaced by a stone footbridge at the turn of the 19th century. The three unnamed
Saxon thegns who held the land at the
Conquest gave way to the king who granted it to lesser
Norman nobles, but not long after most of the village came under the control of
Kirkstall Abbey, a
Cistercian house founded in 1152 on the bank of the River Aire downstream of Horsforth. After the
Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539, Horsforth was partitioned and sold to five families, one of them – the Stanhopes – achieved supremacy and controlled the village for the next 300 years. The estate record of the Stanhopes is regarded as one of the most extensive and important collections of its kind, complementing the extensive medieval record associated with Kirkstall Abbey. Until the mid 19th century, Horsforth was an agricultural community but it expanded rapidly with the growth of the nearby industrial centre of Leeds. A tannery business was founded at Woodside in about 1820 by the Watson family. It was on the eastern edge of their small farm, and memorialised by
Tanhouse Hill Lane. The business became a soap manufacturer and moved to Whitehall Road in Leeds in 1861 and under the chairmanship of
Joseph Watson junior, created
Baron Manton in 1922, as Joseph Watson & Sons Ltd, became the largest soap supplier to the northeast of England, second in size nationally only to
Lever Brothers. Industrially, Horsforth has a history of producing high-quality stone from its quarries. Not only did it supply
Kirkstall Abbey with building materials and millstones in the medieval period, it provided the stone for
Scarborough's seafront and sent sandstone from Golden Bank Quarry as far afield as
Egypt. Situated on Horsforth Beck (Oil Mill Beck) were mills serving the textile trade. Between 1861 and 1862, there was an outbreak of
typhoid. Horsforth was historically a
township in the parish of
Guiseley. It became a separate civil parish in 1866. In the late-19th century it achieved note as the village with the largest population in England. Railways, turnpike roads, tramways and the nearby canal made it a focus for almost all forms of public and commercial transport and it became a dormitory suburb of Leeds. The civil parish became Horsforth
Urban District in 1894. The parish and urban district were abolished in 1974 and merged into the new
City of Leeds metropolitan district. In 1999 Horsforth became a civil parish and a
parish council was created, which exercised its right to declare Horsforth a town. Horsforth Village Museum has collections and displays illustrating aspects of life set against the backdrop of the changing role of the village. During the
Second World War the £241,000 required to build the
corvette HMS Aubrietia was raised entirely by the people of Horsforth. In 2000 the
US President Bill Clinton acknowledged Horsforth's contribution to the war effort in a letter sent to MP
Paul Truswell. The letter is in the museum. The
Scout and Guide hut on New Road Side was requisitioned during the war as an emergency
mortuary for the factories based around what is now
Leeds Bradford Airport (Yeadon Aerodrome at the time), but it was never needed. The building was later used as a cafe, serving as a popular stop-off on the way out to Otley, Ilkley and the Dales, before being purchased by the scouts and guides. In October 2020 Horsforth was named the most musical village in Britain as it was revealed that 22 home-grown acts were in the running for the charts with their latest singles. ==Transport==