NORTHALLERTON, a market town and parliamentary borough in the North Riding of Yorkshire, is situated on a small stream, the Sun Beck, a tributary of the Wiske, and on the North-Eastern Railway, about 40 miles north of Leeds and 17 north of Ripon. It consists principally of a long and wide street running north and south. The church of All Saints is a large cruciform structure in the Early English and Perpendicular styles, with a square tower 80 feet in height rising from the centre. There is a grammar school of royal foundation. Among the charities are a hospital founded in 1476 by Richard Moore and a cottage hospital opened in 1877. A town-hall was erected in 1874. There are no traces of the fortified palace of the bishops of Durham, of the White Friars monastery founded in 1354, or of the Austin priory founded in 1341. The town possesses a manufactory of brattice cloth. The population of the parliamentary borough in 1871 (10,381 acres) was 4961, and in 1881 it was 5445. The population of the urban sanitary district (3650 acres) in the same years was 3164 and 3692 respectively.

Northallerton is supposed to have been a Roman station and subsequently a Saxon burgh. In Domesday it is called Alvertune and Alreton. The prefix “North” was added to distinguish it from Allerton Mauleverer. Near it took place (22d August 1138) the Battle of the Standard, when the Scots under King David were defeated by the English with a loss of 12,000 men. The town was given by William Rufus to the bishops of Durham. The demolition of their palace was ordered by Henry II. In 1318 the Scots under Robert Bruce plundered the town. It was occupied by Charles I. during the Civil War, and in 1745 the English army encamped on Castlehill above it.