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Village in West Yorkshire, England

The name of the village may derive from one of two sources. The first is from the Anglo Saxon words ake or aken, meaning oak, and uurt, equivalent to "worth", meaning an enclosure or homestead. The other possibility is from the Anglo Saxon name Acca, to make Acca's worth or Acca's enclosure. Several place names in the area show that the Anglo Saxons had influence. Words such as "worth" and also "tun", meaning an enclosure or farmstead, are found in local names such as Badsworth, Hemsworth and Wentworth, and Fryston and Allerton. The name Ackworth was first recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Aceuurde and is thought it have been formalised as 'Ackworth' in the 1800s.

The area around Ackworth may have been settled about 500–600 by settlers from modern day Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands after the departure of the Romans from Britain. In terms of Christianity, the first church may have appeared in Ackworth between 750 and 800, a well established tradition being that the monks of Lindisfarne, escaping the Norse invasion, stopped there about 875, bringing with them the body of Saint Cuthbert.

The earliest mention of the village appears in the 1086 Domesday Book: "Manor in Ackworth. Erdulf & Osulf have six carucates of land to be taxed, where there might be five ploughs. Humphry now holds it of Ilbert. [Humphry] himself has there one plough and a half, and fourteen villains, and two boors. There is a Church there, and priest; one mill, of sixteen pence. Value in King Edward's time four pounds, now three pounds. Domesday Book 107. Land of Ilbert de Lacy" According to Domesday, Ilbert de Lacy was Lord of a manor able to employ five ploughs. His vassal was the Humphrey mentioned in the book, who himself owned one and a half ploughs (about a quarter of the manor). The rest was divided between two farmers as Humphry's tenants. De Lacy was a Norman knight, who received land for services to William the Conqueror and built the first earth and timber motte and bailey castle in nearby Pontefract. Domesday suggests Ackworth was small – 14 villagers and two smallholders – but as only heads of families were counted, a likelier population would have been 30–40.

Estate accounts for 1296 showed that Ackworth had developed by then. The Lord had 240 bondsmen working for him and the value of the mill had risen. Adam de Castleford had to pay 10 shillings (£0.5) rent for his land. It has been speculated that the central village cross was erected by the Isabella de Castleford, who built the chapel in the church, which may date it around 1340.

One reason given for erecting the cross was as a memorial to plague victims, possibly of the Black Death of 1349, which would have killed many. Standing at the junction of Sandy Gate Lane on the road into Pontefract, the stone too is a Grade II listed monument. Plague stones were "receptacles for sterilising coins in vinegar, normally at or close to parish boundaries." This suggests that the current location of the plague stone was the outer rim of the parish. The plague in 1645 was said to have killed 153, the bodies being buried in a "burial field crossed by the footpath from Ackworth to Hundhill." and a further 245 were thought to have died "in and around the Wakefield area". One theory was that it had been brought in by civil war soldiers. Another version was retold by Henry Thompson in A History of Ackworth School in its first 100 years. A well loved monk went to Rome and became "smitten by the plague and died".

The area round Ackworth saw several important battles, such as the 1460 Battle of Wakefield and the 1461 Battle of Towton during the Wars of the Roses. An earlier link could be made with the Battle of Winwaed in 655 between Penda of Mercia and Oswiu of Northumbria, King of Berenicia. This was mentioned by Bede, but the location of the battle is unknown. Options include Oswestry in Shropshire, Winwick in Lancashire, Whinmoor, north east of Leeds, and between Wentbridge and Ackworth, where the A639, once a Roman road, crosses the River Went. The battle was pivotal, as Penda had been a powerful pagan king and the victory of the Christian Oswiu could be seen as effectively ending Anglo Saxon paganism. The area around Ackworth was a hotbed for dissent against the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII. A revolt led by Robert Aske, styled the Pilgrimage of Grace, was thought to have marched through Ackworth on its way to capture Pontefract Castle in 1536. The rebels were eventually defeated by an army sent by Henry, and its leaders hanged at Tyburn, including Sir Nicholas Tempest of Ackworth. The nearby Priory of St Oswald at Nostell was dissolved in 1540 and the land bought by Rowland Winn. Ackworth war memorial, opened in 1999, recalls the soldiers from Ackworth who died in the two world wars: 80 soldiers and 40 respectively.

The first recorded mention of a church in Ackworth appears in the 1086 Domesday Book: "There is a Church there, and priest." The Church of St Cuthbert in the centre of High Ackworth is believed to have been dedicated when the monks stopped on their pilgrimage. The original church is believed to have been replaced in the 14th century with a stone church and tower. The tower remains, but the church was renovated and restored in 1852–1854, when it is thought that the roof was lifted and additional windows added. All the present stained glass windows date from that time.

By the entrance to St Cuthbert's is a stone font with a Latin inscription that translates: "Thomas Bradley D. D. Rector. H. A. and T. C., Churchwardens. This font, thrown down in the war of the Fanatics, was set up again in the year 1663." Bradley was given the living of Castleford and Ackworth by the King, but under the Commonwealth of England it was taken over by Thomas Birkbeck and H. Moorhouse. Bradley sided with the Royalists in the English Civil War and is recorded as part of Sir George Wentworth's division in the garrison of Pontefract Castle. The castle survived three successive sieges before Oliver Cromwell set up headquarters at Knottingley and bombarded it. During the Commonwealth period it was reported that Bradley "suffered intensively"; his house was looted and "himself, his lady, and all his children turned out of doors to seek their bread in desolate places." After the 1660 Restoration, the living was restored to him and Thomas Birkbeck in turn ejected from the Rectory. In 1666 Bradley built two almshouses for poor women on the village green. He died on 10 October 1673. Originally built as a branch of the Foundling Hospital in London, work started in 1757 and cost about £13,000. The governors of the "Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children" had already established branches in Shrewsbury, Chester and Westerham. Their move to Ackworth was in view of the "great advantages from having one amongst the active and enterprising people of the northern counties." The hospital eventually closed in 1773 and remained empty for several years, during which time it seems to have avoided being turned into a "lunatic asylum" or "being sold and taken down for the materials." Fothergill died in 1780, by which time 80 girls and 150 boys were being taught there.

Of its time as a foundling hospital, A History of Ackworth School paints an unflattering picture, in which "disease and death carried off great numbers annually," due to "starvation, and even murder, on the part of nurses who had the care of the infants, and of masters to whom the elder children were apprenticed." This "added to the mortality and, though the evidence is abundant of the untiring efforts of the directors to care for the children whilst in the hospital, and to protect their rights when they were apprenticed, evils and oppressions, unnumbered and insurmountable, paralyzed their exertions and the establishment was given up." Children were sent to Ackworth from London and other areas in which there was a branch of the hospital, with the children made to work, as "idleness was the parent of vice," or so it was seen by the governors. Some children would be apprenticed as young as 6 and 7 until they reached 24, although in 1768 this changed to 21.

Quarrying was also important around the areas of Moor Top and Brackenhill. There was a long tradition of quarrying and masonry, and the production of building stone and high quality grindstones used in agriculture and tool making. Saywell describes "extensive quarrying" in the south and south west of the Ackworth area, with stone running "near the surface" in many areas. He calls Ackworth stone "good, but in places exceptionally soft and unfit for building purposes, which accounts for so many faults". The 1848 Topographical History of Great Britain notes "extensive quarries" of stone found in Moor Top, with an abundant supply of "freestone of excellent quality". The first stone quarry was said to have been opened by John Askew, whose initials supposedly appear on the lintel of the Masons Arms, a pub in Moor Top, one of the parish's oldest buildings. Green, in his 1910 Historical Antiquities of Ackworth, states that quarrying was carried out as early as 1611. In 1927 Kelly's directory of the West Riding confirmed that quarrying was still going strong and hinted that the stone was received by a global market: "At Moor Top and Brackenhill are several large quarries, from which great quantities of stone are sent to all parts of England and abroad." Brackenhill was still described as a place where men employed by the stone quarries dwelt, alongside those working in the Hemsworth colliery. The working men's club and institute in Moor Top was built in 1907 at a stated cost of £1,750. In 1879 an explosion killed five people, including three from Brackenhill. The Wakefield Express described how one of the men, John Mann, said he suffered a "compound fracture of the skull and also a scalp wound, his right arm had been fractured, and he was burnt in a shocking manner on the head, face, chest and back." It added that "the poor fellow expired about nine o'clock the same night." After the disaster, the colliery was taken over by the Hemsworth Colliery Coal Company in 1880, went into liquidation in 1890, and was in turn bought by a New Hemsworth Colliery Coal Company. In 1904 this became Fitzwilliam Hemsworth Collieries and in 1907 just Hemsworth Colliery.