The village is first mentioned in the Domesday Book as Cotingelai in the wapentake of Skyrack and the lands of Erneis of Buron. The first element is the personal nameCotta, and the second the suffix -ingas denoting a group of associated people. Thus the Cottingas were a group descended from or otherwise associated with someone called Cotta. This group name was then compounded with the Old English word lēah. Thus the name once meant 'the clearing of the descendants of Cola'.
History
The village was clustered around the original St Michaels Church, town hall and the Sun Inn. This village was from Bingley, with Cottingley Bridge a mile closer. In 1917, two girls, 15-year old Elsie Wright and nine-year old Frances Griffiths, claimed to have photographed fairies in the dell at the bottom of their garden. This led to the Cottingley Fairies hoax, which still resonates in the village into the modern day. The village has a festival to celebrate the story, and in 1997, parts of a film inspired by the story,, were filmed in the village.
The village is in the Aire Valley between Shipley and Bingley approximately above sea level with the River Aire to the north. The road through the village has been changed at least twice. Originally, to exit south from Bingley, travellers had to cross Ireland Bridge then Beckfoot Bridge and approach Cottingley on the south side of the river. The bridge across the River Aire leading towards Bingley was built by 1649, when it appears in the Book of Bridges in the Session Rolls of Wakefield. It was recorded in 1664 that "a great floode hath taken away the foundations so that the whole bridge is shrunke." Cottingley Bridge was rebuilt and in the early 19th century, it was a hamlet independent of Cottingley. The A650 road is now to the north of Cottingley after a bypass was built and opened in 2003. The land to the east of the B6269 is mainly flat and to the west rises to a height of at March Cote Farm. Cottingley beck cuts a deep, narrow, rocky channel flowing north to the River Aire. Although the road, railway and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal are on the opposite side of the Aire Valley to Cottingley, Parliament was asked to consider making the Aire Navigable from Cottingley to Shipley. The village lies on Millstone Grit and there are coal deposits, some bands and seams up to thick. Old mine shafts litter the fields either side of Cottingley Cliffe Road shown as either Old Coal Pits or Coal pits on the 1852 map, and one is listed as Cottingley Moor Bottom as having closed in 1860.
Amenities
There are two churches in the village; St Mary and St Monica is the Catholic church and the Church of St Michael and All Angels is the Anglican Church. St Michaels and All Angels was part of a regeneration project that spent £4.5 million, which included meeting rooms, a doctor's surgery, nursery and youth facilities and 50 new homes. The project started because a 1960s war memorial had been vandalised, and reports in the press caught the eye of Prince Charles, who came to speak at the grand unveiling. The village has a primary school on Cottingley Moor Road, rated Good by OFSTED, and a secondary school, Dixons Cottingley Academy. Cottingley has a town hall, now grade II listed, which celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2015. The town hall was used for religious services until the first St Michael and All Angels church was built in the 1870s.
Notable residents
Dominic Brunt - lived in the house of the Cottingley Fairy hoax in the early 2000s
Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths
Other notes
Cottingley Hall is shown on the 1908 map near the site of Cottingley Manor Park. On the 1852 map it is Cottingley House.
Cottingley also had a reservoir managed by Cottingley Water Works Co. This is shown above Manor Farm on the local map of 1908.
