is rung each Christmas Eve, one toll for each year since Christ's birth, known as the "Devil's Knell", a tradition dating from the 15th century. The bell was given by Sir Thomas de Soothill, in penance for murdering a servant boy in a fit of rage. The tradition was commemorated on a Royal Mail postage stamp in 1986.

In the Domesday Book of 1086, Dewsbury was in Morley wapentake, but with a recorded population of only nine households it was a relatively small settlement