Yorkshire CD books

Old and rare Yorkshire books as pdf file downloads

Bulmer's History & Directory of North Yorkshire
by Bulmer
and
"The City of York, and the North Riding"
by T. Whellan & Co.
and
The Claro wapentake (1871)
by T. Whellan & Co.
and
Topographical Dictionary of Yorkshire
by Thomas Langdale

download version
produced by Yorkshire CD books ©

Ordering information & payment methods: please see separate page.

We have now cleared all of our CDroms and so we now do downloads only.
Note that downloads are set up manually and therefore will not be instant.
Payment can be made either by a PayPal account, or with a Credit Card via PayPal in your own currency, or by Sterling Cheque drawn on a UK bank.

Please see the ordering and payment information page
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For sample pages, please see the links to the Acrobat (pdf) files given below.

The data in this downloadable pdf is computer searchable.

This CD rom contains the scanned images of the 6 books shown above, a total of over 3,800 pages. All of the books are machine searchable. To buy these books (including the 2 scarce Claro Wapentake volumes) will cost you upwards of £400, so all of these on a CD for £15 represents extemely good value for money. Further information on these books is given below:

Bulmer's 1890 & 1891

The 1890 version of this book covers the whole of the North Riding. The 1891 edition (volume 2) is identical to the back half of the 1890 edition (even down to the page numbers), but contains additionally the information for the Claro wapentake (West Riding). This CD contains the whole of the 1890 edition plus all the non-duplicated pages from the 1891 edition, and is presented to the user as a single book.

The format of the two Bulmer's books is a fairly standard "History and Directory" format, with the Histories being more detailed than the equivalent White's/Pigot's/Baines' (but see Whellans North Yorks below). The 1890 book has some 1176 pages plus a few advertisements, and the 1891 book starts at page 637 (of the 1890 edition) and continues up from 1177 to 1238 to cover the Claro Wapentake. The particular volume of Bulmer's 1890 also includes the coloured map of the North Riding (which is normally missing) - a scan of this is included. Most of the Directory of Trades and Professions sections (roughly equivalent of todays Yellow Pages) are divided into "Farmers" and "others". The larger towns however (e.g. Scarborough and Middlesbrough) have both alphabetic by surname and alphabetic by trade/profession - the same names do not always occur in both for some reason. Both books have a comprehensive index of places and both sets of pages for these are included on the CDrom, as are the indexes for the Subjects, Persons and Families. The following can be viewed here on line:

A transcription of the Subjects, Persons and Families indexes for the combined volumes is given here.

Whellan's 1857, 1859 and 1871

These books give a fairly detailed history for the City of York and the North Riding of Yorkshire with a good index. Unlike Bulmer's North Yorkshire, these volumes contain no directories of trades and professions, but the historical and topographical information is more detailed and contains many references to people by name.

Yvonne Clarke said about the book/CD: I found the CD very easy to use and particularly found the navigation very simple. I like the system of having the contents down the side so that you can go straight to where you want and also see what it contains, without paging through the whole thing. It's the first time I've come across Whelan's and I was very impressed with the amount of detail given about each place and thought it compared favourably with Bulmer's which I have always considered the best.

The contents of these 3 volumes is given below, and the following can be viewed on separate pages:

Langdale's Topographical Dictionary, 1822:

This book contains no directories, only Topographical information. It is however comprehensive in its coverage, covering Towns, Villages and Hamlets, and in some cases giving single houses too. The information given is divided into three Ridings, the Ainsty and City of York being included with the West Riding. Also included is a list of magistrates and Deputy Lieutenants for each of the Ridings, with Officers of the Liberties where relevant.
At the back of the book is:

a description of the Rivers and Canals,
a list of the Viscounts and High Sheriffs of the county
a list of the eminent men noticed in the book
the names of Noblemen and Gentlemen who have seats in the county

The quality of the printing of this book is anything but good in some places and should really be scanned in colour photographic mode. However to do this requires two CD roms for this book alone due to the resulting files being so large, so it is presented to you as black and white with every page being readable but the text not being as good as I would have liked it to have been.

Here are sample pages from the start of the book taken from the CDrom in .pdf format (Acrobat).
Here are two sample pages in colour showing the foxing, discolouration of the pages in general, the print through and the print from the opposite page which results in 3 page images on a single page

The above Acrobat files were extracted from the main pdf file and shows the quality of the images. You will need at least version 5 of Acrobat to open this file. If you do not have an up to date version please go to the Adobe web-site to obtain a free version of Acrobat Reader.

The contents of the 3 Whellan's books are as follows:

Volume I (767 pages)
- Description of Yorkshire
- General History of Yorkshire
- The City of York
- The Borough of Scarborough
Volume II (928 pages)
- Brief description of North Yorkshire
- Towns:
  - Bedale
  - Guisborough
  - Helmsley
  - Kirkbymoorside
  - Leyburn
  - Malton
  - Masham
  - Middleham
  - Middlesbrough
  - Northallerton
  - Pickering
  - Richmond
  - Stokesley
  - Thirsk
  - Whitby
  - Yarm
- History for Villages, Hamlets and some single houses in the following wapentakes:
  - Allertonshire
  - Hang East
  - Hang West
  - Gilling East
  - Gilling West
  - Hallikeld
  - Bulmer
  - Birdforth
  - Langbaurgh
  - Whitby Strand
  - Ryedale
  - Pickering Lythe
Volume III (336 pages)
- Claro Wapentake
  - The City of Ripon
  - Knaresborough
  - Harrogate
  - Boroughbridge
  - Otley
  - Wetherby
- Villages, hamlets and some single houses.

If you would prefer the real book(s), please contact The Idle Booksellers through their website.

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