The three unnamed Saxon thegns who held the land at the Conquest gave way to the king who granted it to lesser Norman nobles,[4] but not long after most of the village came under the control of Kirkstall Abbey, a Cistercian house founded in 1152 on the bank of the River Aire downstream of Horsforth.

After the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539, Horsforth was partitioned and sold to five families, one of them – the Stanhopes – achieved supremacy and controlled the village for the next 300 years.

Until the mid 19th century, Horsforth was an agricultural community but it expanded rapidly with the growth of the nearby industrial centre of Leeds.

The business became a soap manufacturer and moved to Whitehall Road in Leeds in 1861 and under the chairmanship of Joseph Watson junior, created Baron Manton in 1922, as Joseph Watson & Sons Ltd, became the largest soap supplier to the northeast of England, second in size nationally only to Lever Brothers.

Not only did it supply Kirkstall Abbey with building materials and millstones in the medieval period, it provided the stone for Scarborough's seafront and sent sandstone from Golden Bank Quarry as far afield as Egypt.

[citation needed] Railways, turnpike roads, tramways and the nearby canal made it a focus for almost all forms of public and commercial transport and it became a dormitory suburb of Leeds.

During the Second World War the £241,000 required to build the corvette HMS Aubrietia was raised entirely by the people of Horsforth.

In 2000 the US President Bill Clinton acknowledged Horsforth's contribution to the war effort in a letter sent to MP Paul Truswell.

The Scout and Guide hut on New Road Side was requisitioned during the war as an emergency mortuary for the factories based around what is now Leeds Bradford Airport (Yeadon Aerodrome at the time), but it was never needed.

In October 2020 Horsforth was named the most musical village in Britain as it was revealed that 22 home-grown acts were in the running for the charts with their latest singles.

It closed on 22 March 1965, along with other stations on the Airedale line: Armley Canal Road, Kirkstall, Calverley & Rodley and Apperley Bridge.

Horsforth has a large percentage of sandstone buildings sourced from local quarries, more than any other part of Leeds.