Information on Pool in Wharfedale, Yorkshire
Pool is a village on the outskirts of Leeds and just within Lower Wharfedale- the River Wharfe passes through the village. It has a population of around 1800 and is situated at the junction of the A659 to Otley and Harewood and the A658 between Harrogate and Bradford and at the foot of the steep hill known as Pool Bank. It has two pubs, The White Hart and The Half Moon, a post office, school, petrol station and cricket club. Its church ,St Wilfred’s was built in 1839 .The village had a station for 100 years before it closed in 1965. Opened by the North Eastern Railway and Midland Railway, the line was intended to link the Leeds to Harrogate line with a new line, the Otley and Ilkley Joint Railway. A separate connecting quarry rail line was opened in 1880 by Benjamin Whitaker & Son, owners of Pool Bank Quarries. The station was at the end of the Bramhope Tunnel, the 2 mile long engineering feat constructed between 1845-49 by armies of thousands of navvies. 24 Men died during the construction of the tunnel, and they are commemorated by a magnificent monument, fashioned in the style of the tunnel’s entrance in Otley Parish Church yard. Pool was well known for its quarries from the 1700’s to when Pool Bank Quarry closed in 1939, and stone from the area was used in a variety of prestigious projects such as the re-building of the Houses of Parliament after a fire in 1834, Leeds Town Hall and Parish Church, Otley Civic Centre, Pool Bridge,Swinsty and Fewston reservoirs, and the Bramhope Tunnel and Arthington Viaduct.
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