Ripon (UK Parliament constituency)
| Ripon | |
|---|---|
| Former County constituency for the House of Commons |
|
| County | West Riding of Yorkshire |
| 1885–1983 | |
| Number of members | One |
| Replaced by | Skipton and Ripon, Leeds North West, Keighley and Shipley |
| 1295–1885 | |
| Number of members | Two until 1868, then one |
| Type of constituency | Borough constituency |
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.
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.
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