A drive through Farndale
A journey to places in Farndale which
featured in a 1301 tax register, marking out the geography of the place our
ancestors settled
Directions
If you have
an opportunity to visit Farndale, then I suggest you start by driving along the moorland rim to look
down into Farndale, before driving through Farndale itself. This page is
intended to accompany the drive through Farndale and I
suggest you first read the History
of Farndale to 1500.
The main hub
to start a visit to Farndale is Low Mill.
Low Mill
Low Mill is
one of the sites of two ancient mills in Farndale, where once Simon the Miller of
Farndale served the thirteenth century community. There is a car park in
Low Mill, with a small charge to park your car.
No Farndale
descendant can miss out on a visit to the Farndale store,
at Low Mill.
From the car
park there is a well signed path which follows the River Dove, the heart of the
dale, and in Springtime a good location to walk beside Farndale’s renown
daffodils, the first of which might have been planted by the Rievaulx monks,
who held lands in Farndale from the twelfth century.
By the end
of the thirteenth century, Farndale was a thriving medieval community and a
tax roll in 1301 had provided an insight into life in the dale at that
time. The Subsidy by Edward I, to fund his Scottish Wars, listed the taxpaying
inhabitants of the dale, and many of the places where they lived.
A couple of
those folk lived at Westgille and Westgil’, now the region of the West Gill
Beck which flows rapidly down from the highlands to Low Mill, where it joins
the River Dove.
Driving
up the Dale
From Low
Mill you can continue up the dale. There are two routes in the upland dale, the
West and East Daleside Roads. Both these roads, as
you go further up the dale, are single track, and can be a little challenging.
If you
follow the west side road first you will pass the quaintly named Toad Hole and
come to Monket House, now a guesthouse. Monkegate featured as a smallholding in the 1301
subsidy.
As you
continue up the west side dale, you will pass Eller House, called Ellerscaye and Ellrischaye
in the 1301 subsidy.
A little
further on you might see a large rock on high ground to the west of the road.
This rock, fallen in some previous geological age, is known as the Duffin
Stone. This is the place known as Duvanesthuat
in the same
record of 1154 of the Rievaulx Chartulary which listed Midelhovet,
places in the dale given to the Cistercian monks by the Mowbray and Stuteville Lords, to gain them
some advantage at the Great Reckoning. In an Inquisition
of 1276, the tenants of Duthethwayt, which
was probably the same place, were listed separately from the villeins of other
parts of the dale.
You can now
retrace your steps down the west dale road as far as Monket
House. There you will find an eastward road that leads to Church Houses.
The York
Archbishop Registers on 19 November 1388 recorded licence for the inhabitants
of Ferndall to have masses celebrated in the chapel
of Farndale. This was presumably the location of the original chapel.
By 1875 the
folk of Farndale were ready for their first pub and when the future local
landlord’s petition was successful, the inn was named after him, the Feversham
Arms.
Church
Houses is something of a hub for various roads that head off in different
directions. One of the roads is the steep road to the rim at Blakey Howe where
the Lion Inn overlooks the moors. However you might
like to go a short way up the east Daleside Road,
another single track road.
Wakelevedy in the 1301 record is now known as Wake Lady Green about a
mile up this road. It
has also been suggested that Almeheved is
probably a reference to the property which is known as
Elm House today, at the northern extent of the east Daleside
Road.
The moorland drive will have taken you
to the neolithic and bronze age sites above Farndale, the place where a Roman
soldier once passed, and a chance to look over the dale and imagine it cloaked
in woodland for millennia as it slept, until it started to be awoken from the
twelfth century.
This drive
through Farndale will have taken you through Farndale from the twelfth and
thirteenth century, when the dale was first cleared for cultivation, and the
places I have taken you to, are those of the thirteenth century landscape,
evidenced particularly by the 1301 Subsidy record of Edward I.
The Farndale Story will provide more
context for the history of the dale, the surrounding lands, and the family who
took its name.
or
Go Straight to Chapter 1 –
the Family Cradle