Rowley Ellwood Collection

Archived local history

The Rowley Ellwood Collection is an online gallery of over 500 historic old photos of Skipton, fully indexed and searchable. This site is a tribute to Dr Geoffrey Rowley and Mr Ken Ellwood who gathered together these fascinating prints. These photos are available for viewing on CD or DVD at Skipton Reference Library.

Browse the Gallery

New!!! - Local History Posts

In response to the increased popularity of this website during ‘lockdown’, it was decided to highlight extracts from Dr Rowley’s Notebooks as local history posts on the Library Facebook page. Over time the scope of these posts has been broadened to include any interesting facets of local history even though they are outside the scope of the Notebooks.

To provide an archive for these posts and to make them available on a permanent basis, they are now being uploaded and stored on this website. To access them click on ‘Notebooks’, then ‘Notebook 4’, then ‘Downloads and Transcripts’ where the posts will be listed under ‘Transcripts’. We hope you find this a useful and enjoyable resource.

Latest Comments

Most recently added comments. Click to see more details.

My Mum, her sister and brother lived here in the 1920s. There was a groundsman who looked after the gardens where the ambulance station is...
Jean 26/05/2025

Demolished alot earlier- 76ish
John Burns 24/05/2025

There are two passages. The one on the extreme left with an archway is Quaker Place/Brookside, the one between Watson and Brown was to...
Claire Nash 30/04/2025

This isn't Queen's Court which maps show as being the next yard along towards the east. The houses reappear in 1330 and 1331 with the low...
claire nash 28/04/2025

My Dad, Clifford Wilson worked at Andertons in the 1950s. He had an office under the clock looking out towards the bus station. I caught a...
Elizabeth Johnston nee Wilson 05/04/2025

Hello Monica! Thrilled to see your name ! Hope you are now restored to bring called Jane !! Frances ( Fanny ) Hardy here .. I was Ann at...
Ann Hudson( nÃ©e Hardy ) 17/03/2025

This is Aireview House children's home - my mum and her sister were here between mid 1930s to late 1940s
Margaret Marshall 06/03/2025

Latest Updates

Latest gallery admin updates and notes:

Latest notebook transcript files uploaded. These cover up to Notebook 2, page 286.
02/03/2021 Admin

Have uploaded the latest notebook transcript files. These now cover up to Notebook 2, page 174.
25/01/2021 Admin

We've started to add scans of Dr Rowley's notebooks. These are real treasure troves of information about Skipton's history. The new pages aren't perfect yet - please be patient as we sort out the glitches.
12/05/2018 Admin

We've tweaked the "Browse all photos" function so that it now shows the most recently added photos first.
14/03/2018 Admin

I've added 21 new photos today! All from Ken Ellwood's collection. I think my favourite is this one of "Berry & Matt" at the Roller Skating Rink. Does anyone know where that was located?
13/03/2018 Admin

When scanning the photos, we often find hand-written notes on the reverse, especially pictures from Ken Ellwood's collection. Where we're certain the information is accurate, we'll include it in the photo description. If it's more vague, I will add it as an Admin comment below the picture, as "KE note" for Ken Ellwood, "GR note" for Geoffrey Rowley, etc.
21/01/2018 Admin

Added two new photos today: Photo 753 and Photo 754. This is the first new content in many years! Ken Ellwood's family have very kindly shared their father's collection of old Skipton photographs with us. Some of the pictures are already on this site, donated by Dr Rowley's widow when the Rowley Collection was first built. But there are lots of previously unseen images too, and we'll be adding these to the Rowley-Ellwood collection in the coming weeks.
14/01/2018 Admin

Fixed bug in pagination at foot of search results page.
09/01/2018 Admin