Harold Raistrick, 1890-1971

Abstract

Harold Raistrick was born at Pudsey in the West Riding of Yorkshire on 26 November 1890. He was the son of Mark Walker Raistrick and Bertha Anne Raistrick (née Galloway). Although his parents were in humble circumstances, the family name of Raistrick is of considerable antiquity. The history of Brighouse, Rastrick and Hipperholme by J. Horsfall Turner, printed for the author by Thomas Harrison & Sons, Bingley, Yorkshire, in 1893, states under the general heading Manorial Rolls: '1398. Rob. Hare conveyed a mess. 11 acres, called Whithillroide in Nm. to Henry de Rastrik. [The Rastrik family gradually migrated towards Calverley, etc., at this time, where their descendants, known by the name of Raistrick, are still numerous.]’ Rastrick is now part of Brighouse Municipal Borough, West Riding of Yorkshire, 3 1/2 miles north of Huddersfield. Harold’s mother was a descendant of the Galloways of South West Scotland, a family of Covenanters who migrated to Reeth, a village in Swaledale in the North Riding of Yorkshire, where some of their descendants still live. Before her marriage Bertha Anne Galloway was a teacher in an elementary school in Pudsey; an uncle of hers, Alderman William Firth, was a noteworthy Liberal in West Leeds.