The name Willerby derives from the
Old English personal name
Wilheard, and the
Old Norse bȳ meaning 'village'. Until the 20th century Willerby was a small village. In 1844 the population of the township of Willerby was 214 persons, in 45 houses. By the 1850s Willerby had a
primitive methodist chapel (built 1850), a Hall,
Oak Hill House, dating from the late 17th or early 18th century, now known as
Willerby Hall, and another large dwelling, the
Summer House, as well as smaller dwellings along Main Street, the village's original main road. A new Methodist chapel and schoolroom were constructed between 1897 and 1900. The
beehive manufacturing company
Yorkshire Apiary Company based in Willerby was commissioned to produce temporary buildings in the aftermath of the
Second World War; the company,
Willerby Caravan Company Ltd., (founded 1944, since 1996 Willerby Holiday Homes) was located on Main Street, the company later relocated to Hedon Road, Kingston upon Hull. In 1959 Willerby and Kirk Ella station closed, Part of the route of the line was used (1970) to construct the
B1232 forming a
bypass for the A164 (Beverley) road, bypassing Willerby village.
Willerby Carr Lane County Primary School was established in the 1930s. In 1960
Willerby County Secondary School (now the lower school of
Wolfreton School) was officially opened, though construction and extension continued through the 1960s and early 1970s. A third Methodist chapel, and the
Anglican church of St Luke, were also constructed in the late 1960s. The Wolfreton school and six form college was demolished and rebuilt at the Willerby site as a three-storey building beginning 2015. The former upper school Kirk-Ella school was made surplus to requirements by the rebuild. (The new school opened in September 2016.) Between 2014 and 2015 a flood alleviation scheme, the
Willerby and Derringham Bank Flood Alleviation Scheme, was constructed in the parish, built in response to the
2007 United Kingdom floods. The scheme consisted of upgrades to the drainage system (Phase 1), and four storage lagoons (Phase 2). Three storage lagoons with total capacity of around were constructed near the A164 at Willerby, and a fourth south-east of
Haltemprice Priory on the eastern edge of the parish. The total cost of the scheme was over £10 million. In 2015 planning permission was given for 130 homes west of Great Gutter Lane, work on the development, "West Hill", started in August 2016.
Wolfreton Wolfreton was a small hamlet approximately north of the old village centre of
Anlaby, on Wolfreton Road connecting Anlaby to Willerby Carr Lane (now Carr Lane). In the
Domesday Book it was mentioned as
Uluardune. In the 1850s it consisted only of few buildings including an Inn, the
Springhead Inn, there was also a farm "Wolfreton farm" at the junction of Wolfreton Road with Willerby Carr Lane. and a new larger Springhead Inn had been built to the north of the original. By 1926 additional terraced housing had been built
Wolfreton Villas, as well as housing along the section of Wolfreton Road to Anlaby.
Springhead Halt railway station was built in the 1920s near to the crossing of Wolfreton Lane by the railway. Housing development off the new (1920s) Kingston Road between Hull and Willerby began to encroach on the hamlet by the middle of the 20th century. As of 2006 Wolfreton continues to be marked as a place on
Ordnance Survey maps. ==Willerby Hill==