Kippax is a friendly, medium-sized village in East Leeds, West Yorkshire. The High Street forms the central point of the village with numerous local businesses, shops, library, pubs and clubs. There are three primary schools in the village and a local high school (in Allerton Bywater) as well as a leisure centre and swimming pool. There are plenty of community groups and organisations, from sports clubs to art groups.
The village is near to Garforth, Great Preston and Allerton Bywater and benefits from good motorway links.
The name "Kippax" indicates that the village was first established in a heavily wooded area of ash trees.
Kippax was a separate civil parish, in Tadcaster Rural District, until 1939, when it was annexed to Garforth. It re-acquired civil parish status, with a parish council, on June 17, 2004.
The village's historical roots are survived by the presence of an originally Anglo-Saxon church which underwent significant modification in Norman times. Typically Saxon herring-bone masonry can still be seen in the Tower. Despite being an administrative centre for hundreds of years, the population remained small and mostly agricultural until the late 1700s when coal mining began on a relatively small scale in local bell pits. The advent of deeper mining and the discovery of coal seams in Allerton Bywater saw Kippax undergo a rapid expansion in the 19th century into a typical Northern mining community. The decline in deep coal mining saw the Allerton Bywater pit finally close in the 1990s despite being in decline since the 1970s.
You can visit the Parish website, here.
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