Editing Haxby (section)

==History==

A settlement on the site of the modern town named by the Vikings as Haxebi was established around the 9th century. The Norse word "BY" meant a township or farm and was usually appended to the name of the holder of the lands, in this case a man called Hakr. A Grade III listed Viking cross base in the churchyard of St Mary's Church, and the discovery of a Viking cross shaft in a nearby garden in 1978 support this date. There is evidence of Roman occupation with the 1966 discovery of a site of a Roman villa on Haxby Moor. Roman pottery was found in 2003 on Station Road along with a silver Roman signet ring.<ref name="Conservation"/>

In the [[Middle Ages]], because the village was in the royal [[Forest of Galtres]], its inhabitants were subject to forest law and took part in the occasional courts that devised and enforced it. [[Charles I of England|Charles I]] divested himself of the forest in 1629 and the village acquired the land to increase its size, resulting in the parish of some {{convert|2100|acre|km2}} of today. Haxby was not a separate parish. Initially it was divided between the parishes of [[Strensall]] and [[Driffield]]. Once [[St Mary's Church, Haxby]] was built in the 16th century it became a chapelry to the parish of Strensall and in 1862 became a parish in its own right.<ref name="Conservation"/>

Much of the current town centre is 18th and early 19th century architecture but significant redevelopment took place in [[Victorian era|Victorian times]] of which the Memorial Hall (formerly the Board School), now housing a local community radio station Vale Radio,<ref>{{cite web|last=Lewis|first=Haydn |title=York's new radio station goes live|url=http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/11420386.York_s_new_radio_station_goes_live/?ref=gprec|website=www.yorkpress.co.uk|date=20 August 2014|accessdate=29 June 2015}}</ref> the present St Mary's Church and the Methodist Chapel are all important buildings. It was at this time, with the arrival of the railway in Haxby, that the village became a popular place to live and commute from. Growth continued gradually throughout the first half of the 20th century until the population explosion in the 1970s quadrupled the population. In 1976, the local authority took the very important step of designating the centre of Haxby as a conservation area. 

By 1992, Haxby had outgrown its image of a rural village and was declared a town, by which time its population had grown to be over 10,000. In 1996, a national revision of boundaries moved Haxby from Ryedale District Council to be part of City of York Unitary Authority and this new authority adopted the boundaries and conditions of the conservation area.<ref name="history">{{cite web|title=A Shorty History of Haxby|url=http://www.haxbytowncouncil.gov.uk/history.php|website=www.haxbytowncouncil.gov.uk|accessdate=29 June 2015|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20150701141538/https://www.haxbytowncouncil.gov.uk/history.php|archivedate=1 July 2015|url-status=dead}}</ref>