GOMERSAL, two hamlets, a township, and a chapelry in Birstall parish, W. R. Yorkshire. The hamlets are Great and Little Gomersal; they lie about 1 mile N of Birstall r. station, and 5¼ SE of Bradford; and they have a post office, of the name of Gomersal, under Leeds, a mechanics' institute, and several mills. -The township includes also the hamlets of Birkenshaw, Birkenshaw Bottom, Birstall-Drub, Fieldhead, Holdenclough, Latham, Moor Lane, Popeley Gate, Smith, and Spen; and it forms a sub-district in the district of Dewsbury. Acres, 3, 119. Real property, £33, 284; of which £55 are in quarries, £5, 766 in mines, and £355 in gas-works. Pop. in 1851, 9, 926; in 1861, 11, 230. Houses, 2, 385. Coal-mining and woollen cloth manufactures are largely carried on; and chemicals and cotton-spinning machinery are made. There are chapels for Independents, Wesleyans, Primitive Methodists, Free Methodists, and Moravians, and a national school. -The chapelry includes but a portion of the township; and was constituted in 1846. Pop., 3, 502. Houses, 744. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Ripon. Value, £150.* Patron, alternately the Crown and the Bishop. The church was built in 1851; and is in the pointed style, with a tower.

(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))