Introduction to Kirkdale
An Introduction to the History of
Kirkdale Minster
This page is an introduction to
Kirkdale, the heart of our family’s original ancestral home
|
This
is a new experiment. Using Google’s Notebook LM, listen to an AI powered
podcast summarising this page. This should only be treated as an
introduction, and the AI generation sometimes gets the nuance a bit wrong.
However it does provide an introduction to the themes of this page, which are
dealt with in more depth below. Listen to the podcast for an overview, but it
doesn’t replace the text below, which provides the accurate historical
record. |
|
A
You Tube film taking a tour around Kirkdale. |
The
Wonder of Kirkdale
The Saxon Church
of Kirkdale is an exquisite historical jewel which lies about a mile west of
Kirkbymoorside, south of the North York Moors, and which overlooks the Hodge
Beck. Within the porch at the entrance door is housed a Yorkshire treasure. It
is a Saxon sundial, and it
bears the following inscription:
“Orm the son
of Gamal acquired St Gregory’s Minster when it was completely ruined and
collapsed, and he had it built anew from the ground to Christ and to St Gregory
in the days of King Edward and in the days of Earl Tostig”.
The sundial
itself bears the inscription “This is the day’s sun circle at each hour”
and then “"Hawarth made me: and Brand (was)
the priest”.
Kirkdale’s
introductory booklet perfectly sets the scene:
One would
look far before finding a place which surpasses Kirkdale for the combination of
beauty of setting with historic and architectural interest. Situated in that
belt of limestone which separates Ryedale from the North Yorkshire Moors,
through which the streams have scoured narrow valleys, Kirkdale can scarcely be
seen from any direction until one is close at hand. The Hodge Beck, rising
above Bransdale, flows southward through a wooded gorge and then, just below
the old mill at Hold Caldron, it enters a subterranean channel, leaving a
surface bed to carry the flood water after heavy rain. The Beck rises again at
the spring at Howkeld and eventually rejoins the
surface bed near Welburn Hall. At Kirkdale a ford crosses the bed of the
stream; normally dry, in time of flood it can be covered by up to three feet of
water.
Much of the
existing church is late Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavian. Within the church are the
remains of grave slabs
and crosses of an earlier period.
Etymology
The name
Kirkdale describes the church of St Gregory’s Minster, the area of the lower
valley stretching out of Bransdale, and the parish.
Kirk is an Anglo Saxon place name which
is usually associated with a pre existing church.
Kirk therefore indicates the existence of an early church. The churches at
Kirkdale and Kirkbymoorside might have been closely associated with monastic
estate of Lastingham.
The word dale
comes from the Old English word dæl, from
which the word "dell" is also derived, which is in turn related to
Old Norse word dalr (and the modern Icelandic
word dalur), which may perhaps have influenced
its survival in northern England. The prefix Dal- is common in
placenames in Norway. It is used most frequently in the North of England and
the Southern Uplands of Scotland. Vale, from the modern English valley and
French vallée are not related words.
The
reference to Kirkdale being a minster on the sundial is likely the English
equivalent of monasterium, which was not
an association with later monasticism, but to more varied types of religious
establishment. So minster does not particularise the religious purpose of the
original building. It doesn’t mean that it was a monastery, nor a minster in
the modern sense.
The
Geography, Geology, Landscape and Setting of Kirkdale
The valley
of Kirkdale and Bransdale is the result of wearing by the river, which in
former millennia cut down the land roughly to the level of the present flood
plain at Kirkdale. This flow would have been interrupted between c 18,000 to
13,000 BCE, during the Devensian Period at the end of the last glaciation, when
drainage from the Vale of Pickering was impeded at the coast. This resulted in
Lake Pickering, which probably extended into tributary valleys such as
Kirkdale.
The
Devensian ice sheets created the natural topography of Yorkshire and Ryedale,
which provided a suitable landscape for the dense network of religious
communities of the seventh and eight centuries. This was a landscape of
strategic corridors through which royal and aristocratic patrons later
competed. The geology of the upland areas directed the meltwaters through
rivers into the lowlands which provide water supplies and rich alluvial
deposits, creating four main regions of the Holderness peninsula, the Vale of
Pickering, the Vale of York and the Humber Levels.
The Hodge
Beck and the River Dove ran off into the Vale of Pickering to form Lake
Pickering, a pro glacial lake. In time Lake Pickering drained off into the
Derwent, leaving extensive marshland.
Ryedale was
therefore destined to become an area of key strategic importance. The passage
of geological time left a natural landscape fit for agriculture and human
habitation and the Vale of York, the Vale of Pickering and the Vale of Mowbray
were well suited to pastoral farming.
The valley
of Kirkdale, which extends from the larger dale of Bransdale, is one of many
north to south dales along the southern edge of the North York Moors, before
these valleys open out into the rich agricultural land of the Vale of Pickering
and the Vale of York. Kirkdale is the southern extension of Bransdale, which
follows the Hodge Beck. It lies west of the settlement of Kirkbymoorside. To
the south, the River Dove which flows from Farndale through Kirkbymoorside
and the Hodge Beck join at a confluence.
Kirkdale
lies immediately to the north of open fertile country which provided a
landscape for pasture and arable activity. The church and churchyard are
situated where the wide area before the dale narrows to pass through a steep
valley with a high cliff, to emerge further south into the Vale of Pickering.
Maps
showing relationship of Kirkdale to Farndale and the lands of the Chirchebi
Estate
The lands of Kirkdale
To the north
of Kirkdale lie the North Yorkshire Moors, the windswept and barren heights.
Flowing down from the moors, following river courses, are the dales, relatively
steeply sided valleys, with Bransdale following the Hodge Beck and Farndale
following the River Dove. The dales flow down to the wide, flat agricultural
lands of two vast vales, the Vale of York which sweeps south towards York and
the Vale of Pickering, temporarily a prehistoric lake, which flows east towards
Pickering and beyond.
The vales
are ancient agricultural lands. The dales beyond the southern extremities were
probably impenetrable and heavily forested for much of their ancient history.
The moors have always been a harsh and bitter place.
Kirkdale
therefore lies at the edge of the wild lands of the dales and the moors, but at
the northwest corner of vast agricultural lands, at the southern point of the
dales, where there is some protection, and access to stone, mineral and wood
resources, and to hunting opportunities. The church is positioned to avoid
excessive flood damage, but is at a location which has historically been liable
to flooding.
It is clear
from the Domesday Book that Kirkdale was the heart of a section of those vast
agricultural lands, stretching from Kirkby Misperton and Muscoates
to the south to Gillamor at the approach to the dales
in the north. The River Dove and the Hodge Beck flowed out of the dales and
through Kirkdale and Kirkbymoorside.
Since Kirkdale cave has revealed animal
remains dating to the last interglacial period (130,000 to 115,000 Years Before
Present (“YBP”)), this is an ancient place, where animals have long
roamed and where our distant ancestors later lived and worked, even before
historical written records provided more direct evidence of their presence.
In time,
after the Norman conquest, the new Norman overlords would seek more
agricultural land by probing higher into the dales, as the wooded dales were
assarted (“slashed and burned”) to provide extensions of the farmed land, into Farndale and Bransdale.
The Hodge
Beck flows from its source in Bransdale. It has been associated with the water
course which was called Redofra or Redover in the Rievaulx
Chartulary.
The nearest
settlement is Welburn which is 1 km south of Kirkdale, and also referred to in
the Domesday book, where Roman finds have been discovered.
Kirkdale was
likely to have had an important relationship with Kirkbymoorside, which
developed from a centralised estate centre to a small urban settlement, whose
landowners, by the time of the Norman Conquest and probably prior to that, were
active in York and the wider area.
Only two
kilometres east of Kirkdale there was a Roman Villa at Beadlam which
might have been part of one estate which perhaps included Kirkdale.
Lastingham lies close by in a sheltered
valley on the edge of scarcely settled moors.
Hovingham, Kirkbymoorside and Kirkdale by
the middle Anglo Saxon period, were secure locations within a wider territory,
and within a network of road and exchange networks.
Lower down
the vale, Sherburn and Kirkby Misperton were at island crossing points within
low lying marshes.
Pickering, Old Malton and Hovingham are likely to have been the
centres of major estates within the wider administrative framework.
Archaeology
at Kirkdale
Archaeological
research at Kirkdale started in late 1994 focused on the church building
itself, above and below ground, and the fields to the north and the south along
the river. The Kirkdale evaluation project started in 1995. This work continued
to 1998, with further work to the exterior of the church in 2000 and 2014. The
excavations were dug by hand.
The work was
led by Professor Philip Arthur Rahtz (11 March 1921 –
2 June 2011), founder of the University of York’s Archaeology Department in
1979, and Lorna Watts.
Much of the
present interpretation depends on the excavation of a small sample of only
about 0.36% of the area around the church.
The
excavations were at Kirkdale itself, with three trenches in the North Field –
Trench II at the church boundary wall, Trench III in the middle of the field
and Trench I to the north by the Hodge Beck. There was also an excavation in
the south field.
Whilst
Kirkdale almost certainly had a long history connecting with Ryedale’s Roman
period, the Minster dates to about 685 CE or earlier. This tranquil site then
witnessed the period of Scandinavian influence. The church was destroyed by a
fire, probably in the early to mid eleventh century,
and then rebuilt by Orm Gamalson,
as recorded on its sundial.
Whilst this
website is a history of a single family’s journey through two thousand years of
British history, a significant part of that story reflects the history of the
place that has come to be known as Kirkdale. For those interested specifically
in the history of Kirkdale, I suggest you visit the following pages of the
website.
· The church in Anglo Saxon Times
· The Kirkdale Anglo Saxon
artefacts
· The community in Anglo Saxon
Times
· The church in Anglo Saxon
Scandinavian Times
· The community in Anglo Saxon
Scandinavian Times
Kirkdale
from Rev. George Young
D.D, A Picture of Whitby and its environs, 1840 Kirkdale, 1857
or
Go Straight to Chapter 4 – Anglo
Saxon Kirkdale
You can also
explore:
A History
of the County of York North Riding: Volume 1. Originally published by
Victoria County History, London, 1914, Kirkdale.
Archaeology at Kirkdale, Lorna Watts, Jane Grenville, Philip
Rahtz, Ryedale Historian, 1996 to 1997.
Kirkdale Archaeology 1996 to 1997, Philip Rahtz
and Lorna Watts, Ryedale Historian, 1998 to 1999.
An
illustration of a Saxon inscription on the church of Kirkdale in Ryedale In a letter addressed to Mr. Gough, by John-Charles
Brooke,
read at the Society of Antiquaries 16 January 1777.
You will find a chronology, together with source material at the Kirkdale Page.