The building of a chapel in Hartwith, as a chapel of ease for Kirkby Malzeard, in 1751, made good a significant deficit in regard to Anglican provision in the area. Jennings records that the chapel was partly rebuilt in 1830 and in 1861, the Chapel was made into a parish independent of it's mother church. Speight reports that the church was 're-opened' in 1891 and dedicated to St. Jude the Apostle by the Bishop of Richmond, although he does not record the circumstances.
Next to the west window of the church is a most singular gravestone, commemorating the burial of Miss Mary Skaife of Darley, murdered by her lover, James Atkinson, on August 1st 1858.
The crime took place in Darley Lane, on the south side of the river. Atkinson was tried at York, but acquited on the grounds of insanity.
These details are taken from Harry Speight's, "Nidderdale and the Garden of the Nidd, a Yorkshire Rhineland".