Type of constituency Borough constituency | Number of members 1 | |
 | ||
County West Riding of Yorkshire Replaced by Skipton and Ripon, Leeds North West, Keighley, Shipley | ||
Ripon was a constituency sending members to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom until 1983, centred on the city of Ripon in North Yorkshire.
Contents
History
Ripon was first represented in the Model Parliament of 1295, and also returned members in 1307 and 1337, but it was not permanently represented until 1553, after which it returned two Members of Parliament. It was a parliamentary borough consisting only of the town of Ripon itself until the Great Reform Act of 1832; the right to vote was vested in the holders of the burgage tenements, but voting was rare for the last contested election in Ripon before the Reform Act had been in 1715! By 1832 it was estimated that there were 43 men qualified to vote, though the population of the borough was over 5,000.
A population of this size made Ripon one of the more substantial boroughs, and after the Reform Act it kept its right to return two members, though the boundaries of the borough were slightly extended to bring in another 600 people living in the neighbouring parish of Aismunderby-cum-Bondgate. However, the next Reform Act, which came into force at the 1868 election, reduced Ripon's representation from two MPs to one.
The Reform Act of 1885 abolished the borough of Ripon, but the county constituency in which the town was placed as a result was named Ripon (strictly speaking, at first, "The Ripon Division of the West Riding of Yorkshire"), and this continued as a single member constituency, though with some boundary changes, until it was abolished before the 1983 general election. Until 1950 it included, as well as Ripon itself, the towns of Harrogate and Knaresborough; after that date they were excluded, but the boundaries instead took in Ilkley and Otley.
Boundaries
1885-1918: The Municipal Borough of Ripon, the Sessional Divisions of Claro and Kirkby Malzeard, and the Liberty of Ripon.
1918-1950: The Municipal Boroughs of Harrogate and Ripon, the Urban District of Knaresborough, the Rural Districts of Knaresborough, Pateley Bridge, and Ripon, and part of the Rural District of Great Ouseburn.
1950-1983: The Municipal Borough of Ripon, the Urban Districts of Ilkley and Otley, and the Rural Districts of Ripon and Pateley Bridge, and Wharfedale.
Members of Parliament
Elections in the 1910s
General election 1914/15:
Another general election was required to take place before the end of 1915. The political parties had been making preparations for an election to take place and by the July 1914, the following candidates had been selected;