Details of some of the district’s most famous sons and daughters can now be accessed via the internet as part of a new online archive.

More than eight million Yorkshire parish records, spanning almost 500 years, have been digitised by family history website Ancestry.co.uk and the West Yorkshire Archive Service and are now available online.

The records detail baptisms, marriages and burials which took place in hundreds of West Yorkshire parishes between 1538 and 1980.

They include businessman Harry Ramsden, who opened his first fish and chip shop in Guiseley in 1928, and is listed in the town’s parish baptism records of 1888.

They also list the baptisms of Charlotte Bronte and her siblings, who were born in the parish of Thornton between 1816 and 1820, although they later more famously became associated with Haworth.

The famous author’s burial record is also listed following her premature death at the age of 38.

The collection pre-dates Civil Registration, the Government system established in 1837 to keep accurate records of citizens’ lives.

The parish records were started when Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s vicar general, ordered each parish to keep a register detailing every baptism, marriage and burial it performed.

Some of the earliest significant records date back to the English Civil War, during which many key battles were fought in West Yorkshire, including the parish burial records of 1643, which list thousands of soldiers who fell in the Battle of Leeds, Adwalton Moor, the Storming of Wakefield and the Battle of Seacroft Moor.

International content director Dan Jones said: “These records detail the baptisms, marriages and burials of millions of Yorkshire men and women, as well as those heroes and villains who made their mark both in West Yorkshire and nationally.

“Most importantly, for anyone living in West Yorkshire or the surrounding area, these records may well hold the key to tracing ancestors beyond the 19th century, which simply wouldn’t be possible had it not been for the diligence of those parish scriveners who documented vital events in their towns and villages for hundreds of years.”

Councillor Neil Taggart, chairman of the West Yorkshire Joint Services Committee, said: “This is an exciting moment for West Yorkshire’s archives. More and more people are researching family and local history, and we’re delighted that our partnership with Ancestry means that people can use our sources 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”