Oakworth Village

The village of Oakworth is located in a rural area of the district, approximately 3.5km to the west of Keighley and 16km to the north west of Bradford city centre.

Oakworth is thought to be a settlement of some antiquity and may well be Saxon in origin. After the Conquest, the Manor of Oakworth was passed to a Norman Lord, Gilbert de Tison. Oakworth was noted in the Domesday Survey and is known to have been a large manor extending from Keighley to the Lancashire border. From the 13th century on-wards the woodlands were systematically cleared in order to cultivate the land.

The name ‘Oakworth’ is thought to be a derivative of an Old English term meaning ‘enclosure of oaks’ and was first mentioned in the Domesday Survey of 1086.

Holden Park is at the heart of the village. Created in 1925 on land donated to the people of Oakworth, the park was built on the former gardens of Oakworth House and still contains many unique and interesting historical features. These include the man-made rockeries and grottos, mosaics and the surviving portico from the original house.

The Keighley & Worth Valley Railway heritage line includes Oakworth station. Oakworth station had a humble existence, initially as a small country station with a goods shed and yard serving the nearby village. That did not change much in the preservation era until 1970 when the station shot to international fame by Lional Jeffries iconic children’s film "The Railway Children".