Great Ayton

A visit to Great Ayton where many members of the family lived, and a side trip to the James Cook Monument and Roseberry Topping

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Directions

Great Ayton is about five kilometres southeast of Middlesbrough and is approached along the A173. The heart of the village is the green. From the green walk down the main road westward along the River Leven and you will also find the ancient church of All Saints at the far end.

To the southeast of Great Ayton is the hamlet of Little Ayton and Aireyholme Farm is to the northeast. These three locations formed the area of Ayton which emerged from Anglo Saxon times and was recorded in the Domesday Book.

Medieval Great Ayton

There were three manors of Airy Holme, Great Ayton and Little Ayton at the time of the Domesday Survey in 1086.

The manor that later became Little Ayton comprised 6 carucates and a recorded population of 17 households with one ploughland. It was the estate of Ulfgil prior to the Conquest and after the Conquest was held by the King. The manor Airy Holme comprised 2 carucates and one ploughland but had no population. Before the Conquest it was held by Alred, and after the Conquest was also held by the King. It may have been held of him by Nigel Fossard. The manor which became Great Ayton comprised 2 carucates and one ploughland, but again no population and was held before the Conquest by Eskil with a value of 10s. By 1086 it was held under Robert Malet by his man Robert.

In 1123 Robert de Meinell of Whorlton Castle south of modern Stokesley gave the Church of All Saints at Ayton to the Abbot, William de Percy, and Convent of Whitby. That church originated in Anglo Saxon times, in the eighth century CE. There are four relics in the church which predate the Viking invasions, including a stone crucifix. The present building seems to date from the third quarter of the twelfth century. The porch dates from the thirteenth century.

Nigel Fossard's land in Ayton passed ultimately with the rest of his estates to the family of Mauley, who had the overlordship of the Ayton lands during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Great Broughton, Tunstall and Ayton were held of the Mauleys for one knight's fee by the Meynells of Whorlton and their heirs

The tenants of the manor under the Meynells were the family of Stuteville, who in all probability had a grant of that part of the vill which did not form part of the Mauley fee. This was in the King's hands in 1106, when Robert Malet forfeited his estates. In 1361 part of the manor was said to be held in chief and part of the heirs of the Meynells.

The Stutevilles probably held lands in Ayton from the early part of the twelfth century, but the first member of the family mentioned in connexion with the place is William de Stuteville who confirmed the grant of the church of Ayton to Whitby Abbey in the reign of Henry II. William died in 1203, when his lands in Ayton, Hemlington and 'Levinton' were worth £10 2s 3½d.

Baldwin de Wake, had inherited the Stuteville lands when he married Joan de Stuteville, the Lady of Liddell, and was lord of the manor at Ayton by the time he died in 1282.

Great Ayton in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

In 1658, three open fields and common land of the parish were enclosed and privatised. A few farmers had their own farms by this time, but most were tenants of larger landowners. Thomas Skottowe of Ayton Hall owned about half a dozen farms including Aireyholme, which was the largest farm in the village.

The River Lever was a significant feature for the inhabitants. From time to time it flooded and burst its banks, or was difficult to ford and at other times it was reduced to a trickle, Most of the water went into the mill race which served the two village mills. Ayton Mill was on the edge of Low Green and Low or Grange Mill was half a mile to the west. Both mills were powered from water from the same mill race. The river provided water for everyone in the village and was also needed for the linen and tanning industries.

The Parish Register began in Great Ayton in 1666.

A charity was left by William Young in 1678 consisting of a rent charge of £6 per annum out of Buckbank. Half of this was for clothing the poor and half for engaging poor children as apprentices.

From All Saints Church

The population of Great Ayton in the early eighteenth century was about 500 people. The houses were almost all single storey and mostly at what is now the west end of the village. There was a smaller cluster around High Green.

All Saints Church, which was larger than it is today, with a tower, was the focal point of the village, and most people attended services regularly. There were however small groups of Presbyterians and Quakers who had their own meeting places. The village then as now was surrounded by farmland.

Michael Postgate hired the school room where James Cook was educated in 1704. It was later rebuilt in 1785.

James Cook was born at Marton on 27 October 1728. His Great Ayton years were from 1736 to 1745.

James Cook was born in a crowded and damp cottage with clay walls and a thatched roof. His father was an agricultural labourer who had moved to Cleveland from Scotland in search of work. His mother came from the nearby village of Thornaby. When he was 5, James was sent to Dame Walker, a widow, to learn his alphabet and how to read.

Just after his eighth birthday the family moved to Great Ayton. James Cook Senior, his father was employed by Thomas Skottowe on Aireyholme Farm about a mile out of the village. By this time there were four children and four more were to follow, although out of the 8, 4 died young.

After the Cook family moved to Great Ayton, James was sent to the Postgate school. This was a one storey cottage with just one school room, above which was a garret for the master to live in. At this small village school the local children learnt their letters and their sums. James 's school fees were paid by Thomas Skottowe. James Cook's teacher was called William Rowland. We know this because he was licenced to teach at Great Ayton by the Archbishop of York. Because William Rowland was also employed to write the annual churchwardens accounts, we know he had a stylish handwriting. James Cook stayed at school until he was twelve. This was the only formal schooling that he ever received and even this was probably interrupted because throughout his childhood he would have been expected to help his father with farm work. When he finally left school he went to work with his father full time for a few years before leaving home at the age of 16, when he set out for Staithes.

Commodore William Wilson was another celebrated inhabitant of Great Ayton in the eighteenth century. He retired to Ayton Hall in 1762 after a successful career in the East India Company. During the Seven Years War, the three ships he command engaged two French Frigates and his memorial in All Saints Church depicts a relief of the encounter.

In 1764 John Coulson, the Lord of the Manor died. It was in the same year that the poor houses were erected.

The Jurassic shales and sandstone of Cliff Ridge and Gribdale contain bands of ironstone, jet and alum, as well as whinstone. Alum had been used since ancient times for many purposes including medicinal. Its main use since the Middle Ages had been to increase the suppleness and durability of leather and in the textile industry as a mordant to make vegetable dyes fast. Alum mining became a local industry since alum was first discovered in the hills around Guisborough by Sir Thomas Chaloner the younger in the 1590s. From the early seventeenth century until the 1860s it was extensively mined at Guisborough and along the East Cleveland coast. The actual extraction of alum from shale was a long and expensive process and it took an average of 50 tons of shale to produce one ton of alum. In the mid eighteenth century the price of alum was particularly high and reached a peak of £24 per ton in 1765. It therefore became commercially viable to mine in places where this had not been the case previously. Several new mines were therefore opened including one east of Ayton at Ayton Bank, just north of Hunter’s Scar in the hills to the east of Great Ayton.

From Thomas Jeffrey’s Map of 1771, 2 is Postgate school; 3 is Langbaurgh Hall and Tannery; 4 shows the cottages around the High Green; 5 is All Saint’s Church; 6 is Ayton Hall; 7 is the manor house; 8 is the location of the cottage of James Cook’s father; 9 is Ayton House; 10 is Ayton Mill; and 11 is Low Mill

The schoolhouse was replaced in 1785 by the poor houses. The Postgate school then ran from an upstairs room in the poor houses.

When the local quarrying of whinstone first started is not known but it was well under way by the late eighteenth century.

The area to the north east of High Green is still known as California. Houses were built there for hundreds of men who came to the village to work as whinstone and ironstone miners. This large scale immigration was likened to the American gold rush, which is why it became known as California. There was no street planning and anyone in the village who owned land put up terraces of houses wherever they could. It therefore took on an irregular street plan. Bricks for these houses were made in the brick and tile works of Newton road, using local clay.

In the 1790s there was a cotton manufactory in the village. James Davison of Great Ayton, cotton manufacturer, insured machinery in his cotton mill plus stock for £800 in 1795 and 1797. He died in 1801 and presumably the mill was sold then.

An important industry during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was linen. There is an early reference to a fulling mill in the village in 1353. At least a third of the population of the village were involved in making linen cloth. Many women and children had spinning wheels at home, spinning their flax, which was usually imported from abroad via the Tees. Weaving was done by men, often working in shops in their back gardens. The finished webs of linen cloth were then sold to local markets such as Stokesley.

Tanning was an important industry in the village until the end of the nineteenth century. Oak bark was easily obtained in the woods around Ayton as a raw material and running water was of course available. Tanning was a capital intensive process and required expensive equipment, so tanneries in a village were unusual. There was also tanning in Guisborough. Ayton tanneries go back to the mid seventeenth century. There were at least two leather tanneries in Ayton. Tanning was a messy industry which involved steeping animal skins in a series of tanning pets, some containing human urine. Some of the leather went to local shoe makers of whom there were several in the village.

The foundation stone of the Captain Cook monument was laid on 12 July 1827.

Victorian Great Ayton

Rev John Ibbetson was the vicar of Ayton for over 50 years from 1827 to 1878. He was a forceful character. One of his achievements was the building of Christ Church, the new church, when All Saints became too small for the growing village. Joseph and his wife Elizabeth Farndale are buried together in the northeast corner of All Saints graveyard.

Thomas Richardson (1771 to 1853) was a wealthy London banker and a partner with George Stephenson in the Darlington works where the early locomotives were made. When he retired he built he built himself Cleveland lodge. In 1841 he bought a large estate fronting the High Green to set up a Quaker boarding school. Two years later along with others he endowed the village with the British school for the children at the village. The Friends’ School was erected to combine teaching with agriculture. George Dixon (1812 to 1904) was the first Superintendent of the Friends’ School. He also published books on nature study and campaigned on Quaker issues such as teetotalism. After he retired he spent 18 years in America teaching newly emancipated slaves before he returned to the village where he remained until he died at the age of 92.

Betsy Martin (1781 to 1867) ran a large business at a time when this was a male preserve. When she was in her sixties, she inherited the Cleveland tannery beside the High Green, together with offices in Manchester. She tried to let the tannery but eventually decided to run it herself, and employed eight men. She survived a fire caused by a little boy with a Lucifer match.

Land tenure, 1847 Tithe Map showing land held by Joseph Farndale

John Wright was a self-taught poet. He moved to Great Ayton in 1855 and promoted his works throughout the country and gave himself the title, the Bard of Cleveland. He received a grant from the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston and used the money to design his dream cottage, basing the design on an open book. The house was called the Bard's Recess, and it still survives today.

Jeremiah Thistlethwaite (1826 to 1910) came to great Ayton in 1857 to start a grocery and drapery business in Eagle Street which is now Station Road. He was a property developer and bought farmland in the village on which he built houses to accommodate the growing population. His son William Henry Thistlethwaite was a keen photographer who left early records of the village.

Great Ayton in 1857

Thomas Richardson endowed four alms houses for Poor Friends at Ayton in 1859.

During the nineteenth century hard jet fetched a good price and it was mined extensively in East Cleveland and along the edge of the moors between Roseberry and Kildale. The mines typically took the form of parallel drifts into the side of hills, with headings also driven at right angles to the original drifts at regular intervals, so that the plan of the mine looked like a chequerboard, with square pillars of rock left in place as support.

The Wesleyan Methodist Church was erected in 1862.

Following the Public Health Act of 1875 a Parochial Sanitary Committee was set up to deal with sanitation in a rapidly growing village. The minutes show a growing concern for public health with eventually led to the creation of a modern sewage system for Ayton. In the areas of Wapping, now Bridge Street and its vicinity, and the newly built California which housed whinstone and ironstone miners, the sewage facilities were very primitive. Groups of houses perhaps had an earth closet in the backyard which were emptied at night via a trap door opening to a back passage. The effluent or night soil was taken in a large metal drum by horse and cart to a tip from where it dried out and was later used as fertiliser for the fields.

The cemetery was opened in 1882, at a cost of £1,800.

Four tubular bells were installed in the church in 1887 to mark Queen Victoria’s Jubilee.

By 1889 the poor street lighting in Great Ayton had become an issue, summarised in the blog, Dark nights in Great Ayton.

Joseph Longstaff lived in Great Ayton. His father John had been a weaver and the parish clerk, and Joseph also became parish clerk. He was a tailor and later, for many years, he ran the village Post Office, with a grocery shop alongside. In 1889 he was 69 years old and working as a tailor again and as assistant overseer for the parish. He lived with his wife Mary and 11 year old son Edward on the High Street. Considerable anxiety is being felt at Great Ayton on account of the mysterious disappearance of the Clerk of the Parish, Mr Joseph Longstaff. It appears on Friday evening he left home in his slippers and never returned, and nothing has been heard of him since. The night was excessively dark, the weather tempestuous, and an unusual amount of water was rushing down the River Leven, which flows through the village. It is very much to be feared that he has missed the bridge and fallen into the water, in which case the body would probably be carried for miles, so strong was the current at the time. Mr Longstaff was an old inhabitant of Ayton, and much respected. He was for many years postmaster. The village is in total darkness during the evenings of the winter months.

Only a week later, some time during last night Henry Peacock, late stationer and newsagent, was drowned in the River Leven at Great Ayton. His body was found early this morning under the stone bridge. His death furnishes another sad argument for the necessity of lighting up the village.

For a while after these incidents the village was lit by gas but, in the summer of 1896, the Friends' School changed to electric lighting, the gas works were discontinued and the village was dark again.

At the beginning of the new century, several town councils were experimenting with a new invention called the Kitson Lamp, which was invented by Arthur Kitson, an Englishman who had moved to the USA. His lamp used petroleum and a carbon mantle similar to those used in gas lamps. The petroleum was held in a metal reservoir some distance away and drawn up to the lamp under air pressure through a very fine copper tube. When it reached the part of the tube that was inside the lamp, the heat of the mantle vaporised it and was lit by an ingenious device that did away with the need to climb up to the lamp on a ladder. As only a very minute quantity of oil was subjected to heat at any one time, even if the tube was broken there was no chance of an explosion.

It was described enthusiastically in the press as a brilliant and beautiful light, the nearest approach to pure daylight and more pleasant to the eye than electric light. It cost under a penny an hour to run it and no underground plant or digging up of the streets was needed. The gentlemen of Great Ayton decided to install one in 1901. Mr Henry Richardson and Mr Thompson, trustees to the manorial rights of Great Ayton, have, with other local gentlemen, aided Mr John Dixon to place on the High Green at Great Ayton a Kitson patent 1,000 candle-power lamp. The lamp lights the whole of the green, and has been so successful that it is hoped that before long the whole village will be illuminated. Since the gas works at Great Ayton were discontinued on the Governors of the Friends' School having electric light instituted the village has had no illumination at all. It is hoped by the tradesmen and inhabitants generally that a number of the lamps will be procured not only to light the road as far as the stone bridge, but also for California.

The Twentieth Century

Whinstone Quarriers at Great Ayton

The Mill Race at Grange Mill The roads around Great Ayton in the late nineteenth century

The High Street and the Royal Oak

Ironstone was an important local industry. There were three ironstone mines in the area at the time of World War 1. Griddale or Ayton Banks was a small concession operated from 1910 to 1921 by Tees Furnace Company. The mine worked the Peckten seam of ironstone, called after the type of fossil found in the ore. The site was not accessible even for a narrow gauge railway, so an overhead cable way was constructed, carried on metal pillars supported by concrete bases, some of which can still be seen.

Waynman Dixon (1844 to 1930) was a civil and engineer from Newcastle. When he was in Egypt he became famous for working out how to transport Cleopatra's Needle from Alexandria to London. He founded the Conservative Club in Great Ayton and organised the War Memorial and planted cherry trees on the High Green.

By 1923, this parish covers 6,394 acres on the western slopes of the Cleveland Hills and to the south-west of the most notable hill in Cleveland, the coneshaped Roseberry Topping. It included in 1831 the townships of Great Ayton, Little Ayton and Nunthorpe. In 1880 Easby was added. The soil is loamy on a subsoil of Lower Lias; 1,935 acres are under cultivation, and wheat, oats, barley and beans are grown. Woods and plantations occupy 461 acres, and 3,035 acres are laid down to permanent grass. The population is now for the most part agricultural, though there are several quarries and iron ore mines in the parish. At the beginning of the 19th century Great Ayton was a manufacturing village containing three tanyards, a comb and horn manufactory, a common brewery, an oil-mill, a water corn-mill, a tallow chandlery and a brick and tile kiln. The tanneries were still in existence in 1849.

West end of Ayton in about 1923

The village is of considerable size and consists of one long street, with an open place at the east end called the High Green. Here, no doubt, was held the market granted to Robert de Stuteville and his heirs in 1253. There are no records of this market, and probably the near neighbourhood of Stokesley soon made it unprofitable. One of the small streams which go to form the Leven flows down the middle of the street. Here in 1265 William de Stuteville granted to the monks of Whitby the privilege of watering their flocks and herds. In the 18th century the bridges and roads were found insufficient and inconvenient for the traffic, and the townspeople subscribed to build the present good stone bridge of two arches. There are also two foot-bridges of wood.

The church of All Saints at the west end of the village is no longer in use, but has been superseded by the new Christ Church. The village has also Wesleyan, Primitive Methodist and Congregational chapels. The Society of Friends, whose meetinghouse is on the High Green, has a considerable number of members in this neighbourhood. The Quaker family of Richardson was settled at Great Ayton, and Thomas Richardson with others founded in 1841 the school for the children of Friends which stands at the east end of the village street.

The old schoolroom of Great Ayton, now the parish council room, bears above its doorway the inscription, 'Michael Postgate built this school house in the year 1704. Rebuilt 1785.' It was here that Captain Cook was educated.

One of the manorial corn-mills is still in existence. In 1281–2 Baldwin Wake, then lord of the manor, possessed a water-mill called 'Westmulne,' and a fourth part of another called 'Estmulne,' which has disappeared. In 1696 the mill of Great Ayton, which was described as very ancient, was in the possession of Ralph Lowther. A poorly built capital messuage here is mentioned in 1281–2, and the Earls of Westmorland had a dwelling-house here called Ayton Hall, which in 1570 was held, with a garden and orchard, by Thomas Tedcastle. The hall was granted with the manor to David Foulis. A 'common bakehouse' was also included in this grant.

The small village of Little Ayton lies a short distance to the east of Great Ayton, higher up the same stream. On the moors to the east pasture was granted in the early 13th century to Guisborough Priory by John Malebiche and Robert de Stuteville, lords respectively of the two manors. John Malebiche gave the following boundaries: 'As the edge of the moor leads from Little Otheneberg and divides the moor and the grove of Ayton, and so as the descent of the same edge leads through the middle of the grove to the common way, which is in the bottom of the valley, to the head of Golstaindale as far as Etunes carth, and thence to the boundaries between Kildale and Aton, and then as the stream flows through the middle of the valley to the boundaries of the . . . canons of Guisborough, with the whole moiety of the grove of Golstaindale which belongs to me, according to the bounds formerly made between Sir Richard Malebisse my father and Sir Robert de Stuteville.'

A farm called Airy Holme, close under Roseberry Topping, is identified with the 'Ergun' of the Domesday Survey, where the king had 2 carucates of land and a 'manor.' A 'plot called Ergum, which is sometimes ploughed and worth 6d.,' appears in the extent of Baldwin Wake's manor of Great Ayton in 1281–2.

The small hamlet of Langbaurgh, a quarter of a mile to the north of Great Ayton, is apparently the place from which the wapentake took its name. It is not mentioned in the Domesday Survey, however, and there has never been a manor here. The wapentake courts were formerly held on the high ridge of moorland to the east of the hamlet and then adjourned to an inn at Ayton, where constables were sworn in.

Nunthorpe, north-west of Langbaurgh, is separated from Ayton by the little stream called the Tame. In 1461 John Headlam, then lord of the manor, left 6s. 8d. to the bridge between Nunthorpe and Ayton. The only important buildings in Nunthorpe are the church of St. Mary and the Hall. The latter is generally said to have been built by the Constables and bears their arms. But there was certainly a 'capital messuage' here in the time of the last Headlam. In 1623 Marmaduke Constable was accused by the rector of Ayton of pulling down the chapel and terrorizing the villagers into attending services in Nunthorpe Hall, his own residence. Various witnesses testified, however, that he had only pulled down part of the chapel to repair it 'better than it was before.' In 1717 part of the hall was let to a farmer, as there was no other house for him to live in. It is now the residence of Mr. G. F. S. Edwards. Grey Towers, a large modern mansion to the north-west of the village, is the seat of Mr. A. J. Dorman.

In the north of the township is Nunthorpe Grange, a farm-house. Here was the old 'Nunhouse' of the Basedale nuns. Their mill was probably on the Tame. A tithe suit between the Prioress of Basedale and the Abbot of Whitby in 1231 ended in an agreement that the nuns should pay tithe for this mill and 'Gugle flat,' while the abbot renounced his right to tithe from 'Plumtre flat' and their meadow-land.

The hamlet of Tunstall, to the south of Nunthorpe, is a detached part of the township of Little Ayton.

The parish has stations at Great Ayton and Nunthorpe on the Middlesbrough and Battersby branch of the North Eastern railway.

Dennis Blake was the flight engineer in a Halifax bomber. On the night of 15 March 1944, the aircraft was badly damaged by gunfire over Stuttgart, injuring all the crew to such an extent that the pilot asked Dennis Blake, who had never piloted an aircraft before, to take over flying and land when they reached home. For this act, which saved the lives of his seven colleagues, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Roseberry Topping

Rosebery Topping overlooks Great Ayton from the northeast and there is a path up to its peak. It is 320 metres high, and its distinctive shape was caused by the combination of a geological fault and a mining collapse in 1912. There is a path up to the top from the northeast corner of Great Ayton.

A Bronze Age hoard was discovered on the slopes of the hill and the hill was occupied during the Iron Age. Walled enclosures and the remains of huts dating from the period are still visible in the hill's vicinity. During this period Jet may have been mined in the area around the hill.

The hill seems to have been held in special regard by the Scandinavians, who settled in Cleveland and gave the area many of its place names. They gave Roseberry Topping its present name, though in 1119 its name appeared as Othenesberg, which derived from an Old Norse personal name, Óthinn along with bjarg or rock. Roseberry Topping is one of only a handful of known pagan names. The name changed successively to Othensberg, Ohenseberg, Ounsberry and Ouesberry before finally settling on Roseberry. Topping is a Yorkshire dialectal derivation of Old English topp, or top of a hill.

When in 1736, James Cook's family moved to Aireyholme Farm when he had time off from working on the farm with his father, young James took himself off up Roseberry Topping, which gave him his first taste for adventure and exploration.

During the Napoleonic Wars, the Wensleydale volunteers responded to a false alarm when the beacon on Penn Hill in Wensleydale was lit in response to a supposed lit beacon on Roseberry Topping, 40 miles away, but this turned out to be burning heather.

A character in Joseph Reed’s 1761 farce, The Register Office wrote of the hill, Certainly God! ye knaw Roseberry? I thought ony Fule had knawn Roseberry! It's t' biggest Hill in oll Yorkshire. It's aboun a Mile an a hofe high, an as coad as Ice at' top on't i't hettest Summer's Day that it's.

From Roseberry Topping you will overlook the sites of the ironstone, whinstone, alum and jet mines and Aireyholme Farm.

The James Cook Monument

Captain Cook's Monument was erected in memory of James Cook and was built in 1827 by Robert Campion, a banker from Whitby. It is situated on Easby Moor, walkable from Great Ayton. You can take a longer walk from the centre of Great Ayton or drive up to Gribdale Gate and walk the rest of the way from this point.

The inscription on the monument reads: In memory of the celebrated circumnavigator Captain James Cook F.R.S. A man of nautical knowledge inferior to none, in zeal prudence and energy, superior to most. Regardless of danger he opened an intercourse with the Friendly Isles and other parts of the Southern Hemisphere. He was born at Marton Oct. 27th 1728 and massacred at Owythee Feb. 14th 1779 to the inexpressible grief of his countrymen. While the art of navigation shall be cultivated among men, whilst the spirit of enterprise, commerce and philanthropy shall animate the sons of Britain, while it shall be deemed the honour of a Christian Nation to spread civilisation and the blessings of the Christian faith among pagan and savage tribes, so long will the name of Captain Cook stand out amongst the most celebrated and most admired benefactors of the human race.

There are panoramic views across the Cleveland Hills, down into Great Ayton, across to Roseberry topping and deep into the North Yorkshire Moors. The Cleveland Way long distance national trail passes the monument.

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The webpage on Great Ayton includes a chronology and source material.