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An Introduction to Farndale Family History
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This page is an
introduction to the history of the Farndale family. It should help you to
understand the history of the family and its origins back to Saxon times and as
a platform from which to explore the wider website, with a few suggestions and
hyperlinks to link you to further exploration through the thousands of pages
which now make up our more detailed history on this website.
As you read
this page, you can explore more detail through the
hyperlinks.
The Farndale Name
The Farndales
descend from the folk who made up the engine room of British history. For the
bulk of such families, it is generally very difficult to go back in time much
beyond about 1500. However the Farndales are
privileged to have a locative name, which is rooted to a place. What is more that place is a relatively small, rural
valley in North Yorkshire, which provides a uniqueness which helps research of
early medieval records. The name therefore provides a unique beacon which makes
navigating the medieval sources much easier. This has made it possible to find
significant records of individuals back to the thirteenth century. We are extraordinarily privileged to be able
to see back that far.
You will find a
bit more information about names in family
history which might help to understand why a locative name
such as Farndale provides a special opportunity to see further back in time.
The locative
nature of our surname also means that even before we can identify individual
people who were or may have been our ancestors, we can explore the earlier
history of the place itself. The place is an important part of our story. That
means we can find a route even further back in time, to the earliest history of
Farndale, a wild forested place, as it
first emerged as a place known to local folk. So even beyond the identification
of individual ancestors, we see back to the period shortly before the Norman
Conquest, with some reasonably detailed optics to about the turn of the first
millennium in 1000 CE and into the Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavian period.
If you are a
Farndale, or descended from Farndales, then this introduction and the wider
website provides your Tardis to travel back in time to meet and understand your
earliest ancestors.
Setting the scene
Prior to the early to mid thirteenth century, the place that came to be known as
Farndale was a forest, flowing down through its valley from the high moors. It
formed part of the great estate known as Chirchebi or Kirkbymoorside. It
was in the isolated region that Bede later described as among steep and
distant mountains, which looked more like lurking-places for robbers and dens
of wild beasts, than dwellings of men. It was a place where nobles
sometimes hunted, a home only for wild beasts and wild men, and above all a
small section of enormous lands, which would be handed about from unfaithful
nobleman to faithful nobleman, across a giant chessboard.
To the south of Farndale, along the
Hodge Beck as it flows out of Bransdale (Farndale’s parallel valley), lies Kirkdale which is located at the edge of the
wild lands of the dales and the moors, but at the northwest corner of vast
agricultural lands which sweep south towards York and the Vale of Pickering,
once a lake, which flows east towards Pickering and beyond.
It is clear from the Domesday Book that Kirkdale was at the
centre of a northwest section of those vast agricultural lands, stretching from
Kirkby Misperton and Muscoates to the south to Gillamoor 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 Chirchebi
(Kirkbymoorside).
Since Kirkdale cave has revealed animal
remains dating to the last interglacial period, this is an ancient place, where
our distant ancestors lived and worked. This cave has revealed the most
northerly remains of hippopotamus.
Kirkdale was therefore the centre of the
Anglo Saxon, and before that Roman, community that would, in the thirteenth
century, extend its lands of cultivation into Farndale. In time, after the
Norman conquest, this section of agricultural land would probe into the dales,
as the wooded dales were slashed and burned to provide extensions of the farmed
land, into Farndale and Bransdale.
Knowing that the modern Farndale family
is descended from those who once toiled for their survival in Farndale in the
mid thirteenth century, we can surmise that those villeins from Farndale from
whom we descend, themselves had their ancestral roots amongst the folk of
Kirkdale and its surroundings.
The geographical scene is therefore to
be imagined in three landscapes. The moors are the windswept and barren
heights which have always been a harsh and bitter place. The dales were
probably impenetrable and heavily forested for much of their ancient history.
They are relatively steeply sided valleys, with Bransdale following the Hodge
Beck and Farndale following the river Dove. The vales are ancient agricultural lands of two vast vales, of York and Pickering. Nestled at the
edge of the dales, as they pour out into the flat agricultural lands, is
Kirkdale, the original cradle of our family.
Our ancestral deep history
The ancient
minster of St Gregory’s at Kirkdale is a
beautiful Saxon Church about a mile west of Kirkbymoorside, south of the North
York Moors, 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
inscription “Orm the son of Gamel 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 inscription refers to Edward the Confessor and to Tostig, the
son of Earl Godwin of Wessex and brother of Harold II, the last Anglo Saxon
King of England. Tostig was the Earl of Northumbria between 1055 and 1065. It
was therefore during that last relatively peaceful decade, immediately before
the Norman conquest, that Orm, son
of Gamel rebuilt St Gregory’s Church.
Orm was prominent in Northumbria in the middle years of the
eleventh century. He married into the leading
aristocratic clan of the region. His wife Aethelthryth was the daughter of
Ealdred, Earl of Northumbria in the mid eleventh century. His brother in law was Siward, Earl of Northumbria until 1055, famous for
his exploits against Macbeth, the King of Scots. Orm’s name suggests that he
was of Scandinavian descent, but by his lifetime, he was very much a Christian,
and a part of the Saxon world.
The Parish
Church was a part of the wider estate, most likely handed out to Orm by King
Cnut, then known as Chirchebi, but known to us today as Kirkbymoorside.
Somewhere within that great estate lay the forested valley that would later
become known as Farndale.
Nearby to the
church at Kirkland is the Kirkland Cave discovered by workmen in 1821 and found
to contain the fossilised bones of a variety of mammals no longer indigenous to
Britain, including hippopotami (the farthest north any such remains have been
found), elephants and cave hyenas. After toying with a theory that these were
animals deposited after the Flood, the Rev William Buckland came to understand
that this was a cave of the interglacial period which started 130,000 years
ago, into which hyenas had dragged their prey.
By the Roman
period, Kirkdale was part of a stable and well
regulated region, only 25 km north of Eboracum (York) and
2 km to the east of the Roman villa of Beadlam, for
which Kirkdale might have been a burial place.
One day in the
second or third century CE, a Roman soldier dropped his arm purse, close to a
prehistoric cairn, above and overlooking Farndale, later found in 1849 and
currently to be seen in the British Museum.
The Hodge Beck
at Kirkdale dries up in times of dry weather, but continues to flow under ground, to reappear downstream. The quietness, beauty
and timelessness of the site, and its disappearing water trick, might explain
its likely religious importance even before Christian times.
In 580 CE Pope
Gregory saw slaves in the market at Rome and asked about them. He was told they
were Angles from the Kingdom of Deira, the lands between the Humber and Tees,
the Kingdom of King Aelli. Gregory was clearly in a
humorous mood that day, and he made three famous puns:
·
He
concluded that they were not angles, but angels, worthy of conversion, defining
a distinct nation that would one day be called England.
·
He
amused himself that they were de ira, ‘of
anger’, and that they were to be saved from wrath.
·
And
he declared that Allelujah (a pun on the King’s name)
should be sung in those parts.
In 597 CE
Gregory sent Augustine to convert the Angli.
By the early seventh
century CE, there was an incipient state structure in the
area of modern Ryedale, under King Edwin of Deira’s peripatetic
government, which held gatherings on estates where food was consumed. Eoforwic (York) was an important centre. Edwin
converted to the Christian religion, along with his nobles and many of his
subjects in 627 CE and was baptised at Eoforwic
where he built the first wooden church amidst the Roman ruins which was later
replaced by a larger stone church.
By 659 CE, St
Cedd the elder brother of St Chad, brought the Celtic Christian traditions of
Iona and Lindisfarne to found a monastery at
Lastingham, not far from the foot of Farndale, amidst the land of wild beasts,
men that appeared like beasts and robbers.
In 663 CE the
Synod at Whitby agreed to a reconciliation between the
Celtic and Roman Christian traditions, agreeing to adopt the Roman.
In about 685
CE, a minster was first built at Kirkdale, possibly with close associations
with Lastingham and Kirkbymoorside. It was dedicated to St Gregory, reaffirming
the new association with Rome and the Pope who had put the land of the Angles
on the European political map.
From that time,
Kirkdale became a religious and political focal point of relatively stable and
prosperous lands in its vicinity, and where the Farndale distant ancestors
likely lived, in this place of profound influence on the future evolution of a
nation.
The evidence of
the early Scandinavian period is more opaque, but
whilst our ancestors there might have witnessed unrest, disruption and
violence, Kirkdale was off centre to the known locations of Danish upheaval,
and Kirkdale might have found itself with more responsibility over an
increasingly dispersed population. When Scandinavian government was more firmly
established at Yorvik (York), Kirkdale might
have become directly associated with the city, and we know that in time the
local elite acquired property in York.
The
archaeological record shows that the old church of Kirkdale was destroyed by
fire. It had previously been surmised that the church might have fallen during
the Viking period, but it seems more likely that the church suffered a fire
perhaps not many years before Orm tells us he came to rebuild it.
Orm and his farther Gamal were
descendants of a family that gained power when the Scandinavian King Cnut
rewarded his followers for their help in the conquest of England in 1014 to
1016. Their forebears probably included Thurbrand the
Hold (died 1024). Thurbrand was a Northumbrian
magnate in the early 11th century. Perhaps based in Holderness and East
Yorkshire, Thurbrand was recorded as the killer of
Uhtred the Bold, Earl of Northumbria. The killing appears to have been part of
the war between Sweyn Forkbeard and Cnut the Great against the English king Æthelred the Unready, Uhtred being the latter's chief
Northumbrian supporter. The family were likely players in multi
generational Northumbrian politics and feuds. They were known political
figures in the north. They had the wealth to rebuild the church on a
significant scale.
The likely home of the distant ancestors
of modern Farndales was therefore a place of general stability, and likely
political influence.
The
Normans invaded England in 1066, and although the north was not immediately
subdued under Norman rule, the harrying of the north meant that the location
with which we are interested was under the Norman thumb by 1086, which was the
date when the Domesday Book recorded the extent of Norman domination. The Domesday Book also evidences the
administrative efficiency of the new overlords. A millennium later, that
efficiency provides us with the tools with which to have eyes on the historical
events of our very distant past. The Domesday Book recorded every important
place in the country - what was there, who owned it prior to the conquest, and
to whom it was transferred after the Conquest.
We therefore
know from the Domesday Book, that Chirchebi was in the possession of Orm
at the time of the Conquest and that it comprised ten
villagers, one priest, two ploughlands, two lord’s plough teams, three men’s
plough teams, a mill and a church.
Before the
Conquest, Orm seems to have held five carucates of land at Kirkdale which were
part of the wider estate of Chirchebi which
stretched 12 leagues wide by 2 leagues broad. A carucate was a medieval
land unit based on the land which eight oxen could till in a year. So
presumably this area of land described the five carucates of cultivated land
around Kirkdale. However this area of civilisation was part of a much wider
estate of Chirchebi, which was said to be twelve leagues (about 42
miles) long by the time of the Normans. A wider area
stretching south to Kirkby Misperton and north to Gillamoor was part of the agricultural lands of Orm’s
day.
So whilst there was a small community of
folk living at Kirkdale, and in the surrounding lands within this wider estate,
the bulk of the estate was deep forest, stretching up through the dales towards
the highlands of the North York Moors. This forest was
probably largely impenetrable, and certainly not settled. It may have been used
for hunting. Centuries before, the Venerable Bede had described this region as
it stretched to the remote monastery site at Lastingham, as ‘vel bestiae commorari vel hommines
bestialiter vivere conserverant’,
‘a land fit only for wild beasts, and men who live like wild beasts’.
It
is reasonable for us to suppose that the folk who started to cultivate land in
Farndale as villeins in the thirteenth century (and who later left Farndale,
adopting its name, the early ancestors of all those who bear the name today)
were themselves descended from the folk of the ancient
cultivated lands around Kirkdale.
After the conquest, the estate of Chirchebi
was forfeited to Hugh fitz Baldric (Hugh, the son of Baldric), a German archer who had served William the Conqueror and
became the Sheriff of the County of York in 1069. Hugh died in 1086 and the
estate passed to de Stuteville family, but they were deprived of it in
1106 when it was granted to Nigel d’Aubigny, one of Henry I’s “new men”. Nigel
d’Aubigny then passed to his son, Roger de Mowbray, initially under the guardianship of
Nigel’s widow, Gundreda.
The Early History
of Farndale the Place
The
Mowbrays were significant benefactors of several religious institutions in
Yorkshire. And so, in 1154, we are introduced to
Farndale the place for the first time in the Chartulary of Rievaulx Abbey when Gundreda, on behalf of her
guardian, gave land to the abbey.
Roger of
Molbrai, to all the faithful, both his own and strangers. Let it be known that
I have granted
.
. to the Rievallis brothers, in perpetual alms, Midelhovet - scil. that meadow
in Farnedale where Edmund the Hermit dwelt, and another meadow called
Duvanesthuat, and the common pasture of the same valley - scil.,
Farnedale: and in the forest wood for material, and for the own uses of those
who remained there, save the salvage. Witness Samson de
Alb[aneia]; and Peter of Tresc; and Anschetillo Ostrario; and Walter Parar; and
Eicardo de Sescal [or ? Desescal.]; and John the
Scribe; and Walter de la Eiviere; [and] Eiinaldo le Poer.
And so, as we first lay our historical
goggles onto Farndale the place in 1154, we appear to enter a Lord
of the Rings World, with a dash of Game of Thrones. The House
Mowbray (a competitor to the House
Stuteville) has given to the monks, who live in their exquisite Elven
home at Rievaulx, a place called Midelhovet, where
Edmund the Hermit used to dwell, and another called Duvanesthuat, together with
the common pasture within the valley of Farndale.
Rievaulx, in its Elven valley, taken by
the website author in 2016
Midelhovet is almost certainly the area in
Farndale known today as Middle Head and Duvanesthuat is probably the
place where the Duffin Stone lies today.
The northwestern end of Farndale showing
Middle Head and the Duffin Stone.
The area of Middle Head in 2021
We
are also introduced to the first individual who roamed the lands of Farndale,
who used to live at Midelhovet some years prior to 1154. Edmund the hermit of
Farndale was a legendary figure who lived in a cave in the North York Moors in
the 12th century. He was said to be a holy man who performed miracles and
healed the sick. He was also reputed to have been a descendant of King Alfred
the Great and a cousin of King Stephen. I don’t suppose he was our ancestor,
since he was a hermit, but this is our first introduction to a character
roaming the place.
So by this time, the dale had become known
as Farndale.
The name Farndale seems to come from the
Celtic ‘farn, or fearn’ meaning ‘fern’ and the Norwegian ‘dalr’,
meaning ‘dale;’ and so was the ‘dale where the ferns grew.’ There are
historical accounts which have suggested that the first people to settle in
Farndale were bands of mixed Celtic and Scandinavian stock and that it was they
who began to clear areas in which to build and grow crops. It is possible that
there was some early cultivation during the period of post Roman Britain. However
by the time of Orm and the Norman Conquest, it was a wild place of wild men and
beasts.
Of course
whilst Farndale is today dominated by moorland bracken and ferns, ferns are
naturally a woodland plant, so it must have been the ferns of the forested
Farndale which gave rise to its name. Perhaps it was Edmund who must have known
the valley intricately, who first chose its name.
The
House Mowbray supported the wrong side in a revolt
against Henry II and the estate of Kirkbymoorside was ceded back to the House
of the de Stutevilles. Robert III de Stuteville was one of
the northern barons who had commanded his forces the English at the Battle of the Standard at
Northallerton on 22 August 1138. He claimed the barony, which had been
forfeited by his grandfather, from Roger de Mowbray, who by way of compromise
gave him Kirkbymoorside.
The Stutevilles favoured the Benedictine monks of Saint
Mary's Abbey, York, and their own small House of nuns founded by them at
Keldholme, just to the east of Kirkbymoorside. Rievaulx Abbey therefore went
out of favour in its claim to Farndale. In about 1166 Robert de Stuteville
granted to Keldholme Priory the timber and wood in Farndale. Farndale itself
then disappeared from the records for about a century, though we can still
follow the fortunes of the Stuteville family and of the estate of
Kirkbymoorside. In 1216, Joan de Stuteville, the daughter of Nicholas II de
Stuteville and Devorguilla of Galloway and the heiress of the Stuteville
estates was born. She married Hugh Wake, feudal lord of Bourne and later Hugh
Bigod, Chief Justice of England, but as a widow was known as Joan de
Stuteville, the ‘Lady of Liddell’. Before her death in 1276, she enfeoffed the
manor of Kirkbymoorside to her son, Baldwin Wake.
It is during the time of Joan de
Stutevilles, that we meet the first settled inhabitants of Farndale. We will
take up that story next. But before we do so, we should just complete our
history of the de Stutevilles who were the overlords of the Kirkbymoorside
estate and therefore of the lands of Farndale during the following centuries,
as our ancestors started to work on the land there.
The custody of Baldwin Wake was granted
to Henry de Percy, who transferred it to the Society of the Ballardi of Lucca.
However this was not ratified by the King, but later ‘not recollecting the
confirmation of the grant’, he ‘caused the manor, then in the hands of
the merchants, to be taken into his hands, and he delivered it with fees
&c, who since he has held the said manor has received £340 out of the
issues thereof, for which Henry de Percy has made supplication to the King to
caused satisfaction to be made to the merchants for his exoneration.”
Thomas Wake remained in possession of
the lands until he died in 1349. His heir was his sister Margaret, wife of
Edmund Earl of Kent, whose son John succeeded her. John died three years later,
however without issue, and his sister Joan, ‘the Fair Maid of Kent’, became the
heir. The impression of the Fair Maid of
Kent’s seal depicted a lady riding on horseback sideways, which is a horse riding style which she is said to have been the first
to adopt. Her first husband was Thomas Holand, created Earl of Kent in 1360, by
whom he had a son and heir Thomas Holand. Later Joan married Edward the Black
Prince, with whom in 1365 she settled this manor on Thomas and Alice his wife
and their heirs, with reversion to the prince and herself. In 1397 Thomas Earl
of Kent died and Alice was left in possession for life. Of her sons, Thomas the
Elder was beheaded as a traitor in 1399 and his brother Edmund died before his
mother in 1408, when the earldom of Kent fell into abeyance.
The First Farndales
1276
Only a few years after the death of Joan
de Stuteville, the Lady of Liddell, the Inquisition
Post Mortem
taken after Joan’s death in 1276, reveals assarting on a grand scale. In Farndale, bonded tenants were
paying a standard rent of 1s 0d for each acre. This produced total income of
£27 5s 0d, suggesting a cultivated acreage in Farndale of 545 acres. So this provides us with a snapshot to suppose that
assarting must have started from about 1230, when individuals were placed from
the surrounding lands into Farndale to clear land for agriculture and then to
toil for their feudal overlords, paying them rents to provide the landlords
with an income from the land, in return for bond holdings from which to scrape
their own meagre living.
1282
The Inquisition
Post Mortem
of Joan’s Son, Baldwin Wake, taken only six years later in 1282, noted that the bonded villeins were
said to hold their land ‘not by the bovate of land, but by more or less’ (a
bovate is an eighth of a carucate). The 1282 extent shows a considerable
increase over that of 1276, but this probably means nothing more than that a
new and up-to-date survey was used as the basis for the later document. The
Farndale rents now amounted £38 8s 8d together with a nut rent and a few boon
works and if the rate of 1s 0d per acre still applied, this would give a total
acreage held in bondage of 768 acres. In neighbouring Bransdale rents were up
to £4 14s 3d which would relate to about 188 acres at the old rent of 6d per
acre for that valley. For the first time the number of bondmen were given - 25
in East Bransdale and 90 in Farndale.
1301
The lay subsidy assessments of 1301 afforded a brief glimpse of the settlement pattern, listing several contributors bearing
the names of the farms which are still to be found at Farndale such as
‘Wakelevedy’ (Wake Lady Green), ‘Westgille’ (West Gill), Monkegate (Monket
House) and ‘Elleshaye (Eller House) and which are scattered all around the
dale.
So between about 1230 and the end of the
thirteenth century, we have a picture of villeins or serfs or peasants, who
together formed the body of folk who must have been our ancestors, toiling the
soil in a dreadful battle of survival.
It is probable that those individuals in
turn were plucked from the cauldron or primeval sludge of Bronze Age Beaker Folk, Iron Age Settlers,
Brigantes, Romans, Vikings, Angles and Saxons that had roamed the moors and
Dales of Yorkshire since about 9,000 years BCE. Our probable ancestors are the folk
living in the cultivated lands around Kirkdale, a place of even greater
antiquity, which has left us the remains of interglacial age hippopotami.
The Early Farndale Pioneers
Imagine
a group of folk,
all called William or Philip, Robert or Peter, who meet at the start of a day’s
work one day in Farndale. To distinguish themselves, the Williams might call
each other by their occupations (William the Smith, or William the Shepherd),
by their father’s name (as Orm Gamalson, son of Gamal did), or by some other
description. They would not have called themselves by place, or at least by the
place where they all lived, being Farndale, for that would not distinguish them
at all.
But suppose another William leaves
Farndale and travels to the Wapentake of Langbaugh. He might well call himself
William of Farndale which would distinguish him from other Williams. And so the
folk who stayed in Farndale, were more likely to adopt descriptive, patronymic
or occupational names, or defined by the location of places outside Farndale
from whence they had come previously as can be seen in the list of names in the 1301 record.
But when De Willemo de Farndale
appeared in the same 1301 Subsidy in the Wapentake of Langbaugh, he was the one
to call himself William of Farndale. It was those pioneers from Farndale, who
would adopt its name to describe themselves.
So those who first described themselves as de Farndale, were those adventurous and pioneering
soles, who ventured out to new places. As we are introduced to our later
pioneer ancestors, we might reflect that we come from a stock of pioneers and
adventurers.
Ordinary folk
were starting to use such descriptions beyond Christian names by the early
thirteenth century. However these names tended to
fluctuate until about the fourteenth century. If William of Farndale moved from
Langbaugh to York, he might have started to call himself William of Langbaugh. However by the fourteenth century, such names became fixed, and started to be passed
down as hereditary names. We can actually see this
happening in the Farndale history. From about 1310, we see the ‘de’, ‘of’ being
dropped. This tends to suggest folk no longer defining themselves as ‘of’ a
place, but using a name, with more permanency. So we see the first example of
William Farndale (FAR00034)
born in about 1310, and then William Farndale of Sheyrefhoton
(Sheriff Hutton)(FAR00036),
born about 1332. He is not William of Sheriff Hutton, but William Farndale, who
lives in Sheriff Hutton.
The records of the first individuals
using the Farndale name tended to record the payment of taxes, surveys of the
inhabitants of the land, and illegal activity.
To accompany this introduction you will
find a timeline of Farndale history from 1000 to 1600, which provides a summary of the
history to this stage, and which draws out the individual characters who appear
from this point. The colour coding interlinks the history of individual Farndales, with the history of the feudal overlords who held the land,
with the Kings and Queens at the pinnacle of the
hierarchy, and with the
dominant events at the national level of British history.
So it is, that we learn much from the
records about a significant number of our ancestors who were fined, outlawed and even excommunicated, for poaching and illegally
hunting, particularly within the Royal Forest of Pickering. There is a historical documentary
series on Sky television, called The Britains.
Episode 2 depicts much of the historic background to the events described so
far. It also depicts two outlaws pursued in Pickering Forest called Philips,
but who may as well have been Farndales. The documentary observes that it was
such folk who would inspire the legend of Robin Hood, and whose archery skills would one day
comprise the successful armies who fought at Crecy and Agincourt. Park this
thought about the links to the legend of Robin Hood, because we shall find
ourselves in the heart of Robin Hood territory before too long.
So
whether you perceive these folk as petty criminals or heroic ‘merry men’, you
will find plenty of such characters including:
·
Farndales
indicted for poaching in 1280 (FAR00019)
Roger, son of Gilbert of Farndale, Nicholas de Farndale, William the smith of
Farndale, John the shepherd of Farndale, and Alan the son of Nicholas de
Farndale;
·
Peter
de Farndale (FAR00008),
whose son Robert (FAR00012)
was fined at Pickering Castle in 1293.
·
Robert
son of Peter de Farndale, (FAR00012)(The Farndale 2 Line) was outlawed for hunting in 1293.
·
Roger
milne (miller) of Farndale (FAR000013A),
son of Peter (FAR00008)
of Spaunton on Monday in January 1293, killed a soar and slew a hart with bows
and arrows at some unknown place in the forest. He with others were outlawed on
5 April 1293.
·
Richard
de Farndale (FAR00016)
was excommunicated for stealing in 1316.
·
Robert
of Farndale (FAR00024)
was fined at Pickering Castle for poaching in 1322.
·
John
de Farndale (FAR00026)
was released from excommunication at Pickering Castle on 9 Apr 1324.
·
Simon
de Farndale (FAR00021)
(The Farndale 4 Line), shoes son Robert was fined at
Pickering Castle in 1332.
·
Robert
of Farndale (FAR00031)
was outlawed with others for hunting a hart in the forest in 1332.
·
Nicholas
de Farndale (FAR00022)(The Farndale 3 Line) gave bail for Roger son of Gilbert of
Farndale who had been caught poaching in 1334 and 1335.
·
William,
smith of Farndale (FAR00037)
on Monday 2 December 1336, came hunting in Lefebow with bow and arrows and
gazehounds………’
·
Gilbert
de Farndale (FAR00018)
bailed by Nicholas Farndale (FAR00022)
for poaching in 1344 and 1345.
·
Commission
of oyer and terminer on 17 January 1348 to a long list of names including
William Smyth of Farndale (FAR00040)
the younger and Richard Ruttok of Farendale for breaking in to the park at
Egton, hunting and carrying away the property of the owner with deer, and for
assaulting the owner’s men and servants causing their inability to work for a
long time, for which they were fined 1 mark.
A
historical explanation for this activity might have been the Great Famine
following bad weather and poor harvests in 1315 which gave rise to widespread
unrest, crime and infanticide; followed by the Black Death which hit Yorkshire in March 1349.
As individuals who started to use the
name Farndale, started to appear outside the dale, it becomes obvious from the
records that there are some geographical groupings of Farndales in the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries around Sheriff
Hutton
(of which family have been preserved two wills from two generations) , York (which family bore three generations of
freemen of York) and then Doncaster. Perhaps there is some
interrelationship between these three families. Perhaps those who settled in
Doncaster by 1335 were somehow linked to the York family.
I
recently drove south from the North York Moors to the York ring road and on to
Doncaster. The land is flat and richly agricultural, albeit with rivers and
floodplains. York was Eboracum, the Roman capital of northern England
(and Jorvik the Viking capital thereafter), so even after Roman decline,
a natural focal point. Similarly
Doncaster was previously the Roman city of Danum, at the crossing on the
Rover Don. So it’s not surprising the find the
Farndales of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries drawn in that direction.
Although our history from 1500 will be firmly rooted in Cleveland, to the north
of the moors, at this stage there is no evidence of our ancestors anywhere but
in this southern agricultural region.
So let’s take stock:
·
From
about 1230, the land was cultivated and our villain forefathers no doubt lived
a pitiful life, surviving each day as they could.
·
By
1276, there was a more developed community of folk who were farming in
Farndale, and we start to be introduced to individuals.
·
From
1280, we start to see records of poachers and huntsmen who were fined,
outlawed, or even excommunicated in the imposing Norman Pickering Castle.
·
The
country faced the hardships of the Great Famine of 1315 and the Black Death
from 1349 in Yorkshire, though in time, with a decimated population, that would
provide greater power to the peasantry, to negotiate a better deal for
themselves.
·
By
the thirteenth and fourteenth century, the inhabitants of Farndale who had
started to use its name to define themselves had moved south and had clustered
around Sheriff Hutton, York and Doncaster.
The Doncaster Era
Modern
Doncaster is
strongly characterised by its industrial past. However
the Doncaster to which we now turn our attention was a very different place. It
was the place of a significant Roman Fort. After the Norman Conquest, Nigel
Fossard had built a Norman Castle. By the thirteenth century, Doncaster was a
busy town. In 1194 Richard I had given the town recognition by bestowing a town
charter. There was a disastrous fire in 1204 (fires seem to feature heavily in
Doncaster’s history) from which the town slowly recovered.
In 1248, a charter was granted for
Doncaster Market to be held in the area surrounding the Church of St Mary
Magdalene, which had been built in Norman times. But over time the parish
church was transferred to the church of the old Norman castle, the castle which
by then was in ruin. The new parish church was the original Church of St
George.
During the 14th century, large numbers of friars arrived in Doncaster who were
known for their religious enthusiasm and preaching. In 1307 the Franciscan
friars (Greyfriars) arrived, as did Carmelites (Whitefriars) in the mid-14th
century. Other major medieval features included the Hospital of St Nicholas and
the leper colony of the Hospital of St James, a moot hall, a grammar school and a five-arched stone town bridge with a chapel
dedicated to Our Lady of the Bridge.
It is in this setting that we meet William Farndale.
We first see his name in a grant of land in Latin by Walter de Thornton, the
vicar of Doncaster, and Wm de Farndell, his chaplain on 11 April 1355. Perhaps
William may have been about twenty then, so perhaps he was born in about 1335. The Black Death had ravaged Doncaster from about 1349,
and its population had been reduced to about 1,500. So
William must have survived the Black Death. Perhaps he was already a chaplain
then, experiencing the horrors with pastoral responsibilities. Or perhaps it
was his survival of those horrors that was his path to the church.
It is possible (but there is no evidence
of this) that William Farndale might have been the son of Walter de Farndale
(about 1300 to 1370), who was a vicar at Haltwhistle, Lazonby,
Illis- haghe hospital, Upmeadon, and Chemlsford and that
his grandfather might have been Walter de Farndale of Cayton (about
1275 to 1328), for whose death in 1328 Hugh de Faulkes of Lebreston
was required to join an expedition against the Scots in exchange for his
pardon. There is no evidence of this, but the ecclesiastical links makes it a
possibility. Perhaps this was a family whose links with the church provided
opportunities to venture more widely.
We then spot William of Doncaster again
in the patent rolls
of 1358:
On
7 December 1368, Robert Ripers transferred five acres of land at Lovershall
(just south of Doncaster) to Sir William Farndale, still chaplain. The term
‘sire’ was used as an address to religious men such as priests, it does not
denote a knight. ‘Know
men present and to come that I Robert Ripers of Loversall have given, granted,
and by this my present charter confirmed to Sir William Farndale, chaplain,
5 acres of land with appurtenances lying in the fields of Loversall, extending
from the meadows of the Wyke to the Kardyke, of which 1 acre 1 rood lie in
Wykefield between the land of Robert son of John son of William, son of Robert
on both sides. And 2 1/2 acres lying in the Midelfild between my own land on
the west and the land of Richard son of Robert on the east. And 1 rood lying in
Wodfild between my own land on the west and the land of John of Wakefield on
the east. To have and to hold the said 5 acres of land with appurtenances to
the said William and his heirs and assigns, freely, quietly, well and in peace,
from the chief lords of the free by the services then owed and customary by
right. And I, said Robert, and my heirs, will warrant the said 5 acres with
appurtenances to the said Sir William, his heirs and assigns against all men
for ever. In witness whereof I have affixed my seal to this present charter.
These being in witness; Sir John of Loversall, Chaplain; William Vely, Robert
Clerk, Richard Rilis, John son of William son of Roger
and others. Given at Loversall on Thursday after the Feast of St Nicholas, 42
Edward III. (7 Dec 1368).’
A drawing of the early church in about 1300 from the History of St
George’s Church, Doncaster, Destroyed by Fire, February 28, 1853, by the
Rev J E Jackson.
So
William was the vicar of the impressive early Church of St
George’s at the end of the fourteenth century. Whilst not yet of the stature of the
impressive Doncaster Minster of St George’s, which was rebuilt on the site
after a fire destroyed the early church in 1853 and which was given Minster
status in 2004, it was even by then an impressive church.
William transferred his land at
Lovershall to John Burton in 1402; “‘Know men present and to come that I,
William Farndalle, Vicar of the Church of Doncastre, have given, granted and by
this present charter confirmed to John Burton of Waddeworth, his heirs and
assigns 5 acres of land with appurtenances lying in the fields of Loversall.
Viz, those 5 acres of land which I had as gift and feoffment of Robert Ryppes
of Loversalle and which extend from the meadows of the Wyke to the Kardyke as
the charter drawn up for me by Robert Ryppes more fully sets out. To have and
to hold the said 5 acres of land with appurtenances to the said John Burton,
his heirs and assigns from the chief of the lords of the fee by the services
thence owed and customary by right. And I William Farndalle and my heirs will
warrant the said 5 acres of land with appurtenances to the said John Burton,
his heirs and assigns against all men for ever. In witness whereof I have
affixed my seal to this present charter. These being witnesses; John Yorke of
Loversalle, Robert Oxenford of Loversalle, William Ryppes of the same, John
Millotte of the same, William Clerk of the same and many others. Given at
Loversalle 6 April 3 Henry IV. (6 April 1402).”
In 1403 we see the installation of
William Couper as the vicar of Doncaster, on William Farndale’s resignation.
The record then goes silent, albeit
I do intend to do some detailed work in the Doncaster record. So we don’t know if William Farndale married or if he had
children.
However our radar warms up again on 29
October 1564 when a wedding took place between a William
Farndell
and a Margaret Atkinson in the Church of St Magdalene in the village of
Campsall, which is only a few miles north of Doncaster.
So
on a balance of probabilities, it seems more likely than not that William
Farndell who married in 1564 came from the same line of Farndales as William
Farndale, the vicar of Doncaster. There must have been a generation or two
between them. It is possible that William the Younger was descended from a
brother of William the Elder, or perhaps he was a direct descendant.
Now this is where we remind ourselves of
our more distant ancestors who were outlaws in Pickering Forest, reminiscent at
least of the Robin Hood stories. Now it is to be observed that
Campsall is a town which was then dominated to the west by the inaccessible and
waterlogged marches of the Humber levels and to the west, by Barnsdale Forest,
an area (together with Sherwood) closely associated with the legend of Robin
Hood. Robin Hood is largely a creature of ballads composed in the fourteenth
century (at the time of William Farndale, the vicar). He is reputed to have
operated in various eras from the twelfth century. A map showing the geographical
locations associated with Robin Hood reveals that Campsall is in its heart:
Indeed
a fifteenth century ballad A Gest of
Robyn Hode suggests that Robin Hood built a chapel in Barnsdale that he dedicated to Mary
Magdalene - ‘I made a chapel in Bernysdale, That seemly is to se, It is of
Mary Magdaleyne, And thereto wolde I be’ and it has been suggested that
this was their wedding place. Given the location of the Church of St Mary
Magdalene at Campsall, it has been strongly suggested that this is the church
of Robin Hood repute, and it was here in 1538, that William Farndell married
Mary Atkinson.
If Robin Hood was a legend, might it not be that the
fourteenth century ballads which told of his exploits in the twelfth and
thirteenth century days of Richard I and King John, might have been strongly
influenced by the tales of our own Farndale ancestors in the forest of
Pickering, outmanoeuvring the sheriffs of Yorkshire? There have been many
suggestions that the legend of Robin Hood may have its real roots in Yorkshire.
Whilst the records have not allowed me
to put beyond doubt a link between the Doncaster Farndales, and the family who
lived predominantly in Cleveland, to the north of the North York Moors, who are
the undoubted ancestors of modern Farndales, the evidence strongly points to
that being so. If it is, then this provides modern Farndales with a direct
ancestral linkage to Sir William Farndale, Vicar of Doncaster, and thence to
the Farndales of Sheriff Hutton and York and the emigrants from Farndale the
place, who we have already met.
Arrival in Cleveland
Parish
records began to be kept, by the orders of Thomas Cromwell, in 1538. From that
date, we benefit from records which allow us to follow family relationships
with certainty. And so it is that we are able to identify with certainty that Nicholas farndaile was buried in the parish of
Kirkleatham, in Cleveland, five miles to the west of Skelton on 6 August 1572.
That
is all that we know about Nicholas. Martin Farndale assessed a possible birth
date of 1512, assuming that he might have lived for 60 years. That is not
a known fact. I know that many Farndale family trees on Ancestry and Find
My Past have used this now long
established estimate as the basis for Nicholas’
dates 1512-1572. That may well be right, but he may have been born at some
other time.
We also know that an Agnes Farndale was buried at Kirkleatham on 23 January
1586. That is all that we know about Agnes. It has therefore been assumed that
Agnes was Nicholas’ wife. Perhaps they married in about 1537. These are
carefully considered guesses, and on a balance of probabilities, they are
likely to be about right.
Nicholas and Agnes may well
be the paternal and maternal grandparents of all modern Farndales.
We also know that a Jean Farndale married Richard Fairley, a relatively
pedigreed fellow, in Kirkleatham on 16 October 1567. It seems probable that
Jean was the daughter of Nicholas and Agnes.
And then there was a William Farndale who died on 24 January 1606 and was
buried the next day at St John the Baptist Church in Skelton, five miles east
of Kirkleatham. Because there are not many Farndale candidates about at that
time, it seems pretty likely that William was the son
of Nicholas and Agnes. Since we have already identified that a William Farndale
married Margaret Atkinson in Campsall, near Doncaster in 1564, we have
concluded that this is the same person. Of course we can’t be sure about that. However it helps us to make sense of the records. It seems
quite likely.
We don’t find any evidence of Farndales
in Cleveland before 1572. After 1572, we find almost all Farndales, and all
Farndales who are ancestors of the Kilton lines from which I and most others
descend, in Cleveland. So we have to explain how the
Farndales who had become concentrated solely south of the North York Moors
before 1572, came to move into Cleveland, such that they were predominantly
clustered north of the North York Moors after 1572.
On a balance of probabilities, whilst
acknowledging the difficulty in putting this beyond doubt, we might surmise
that:
·
Nicholas
and Agnes Farndale, who both died in Kirkleatham, were born in Campsall or
thereabouts, around Doncaster, perhaps in about 1512 and 1516 respectively. If
so, they were likely descended from William Farndale, the Vicar of Doncaster,
or at least from his wider family (his brother perhaps).
·
William
Farndale junior was born in say 1538, and Jean Farndale in say 1540 to Nicholas
and Agnes.
·
William
Farndale married Mary Atkinson at the Church of St Mary Magdalene in Campsall
in 1564.
·
Between
1564 and 1567, the family moved to Kirkleatham. We don’t know why. Maybe that
was Agnes’ ancestral home. Perhaps more likely Jean had met Richard Fairly, a
relatively well established fellow, whose family were
Scottish, but who had more recently become associated with Cleveland and
Kirkleatham. Perhaps the family saw opportunities by a move north.
·
On
16 October 1567, Jean married Richard Fairley in Kirkleatham.
·
The
family lived generally at Kirkleatham until Nicholas and Anne’s death in 1572
and 1586, though William had by then realigned slightly eastward, to Skelton.
So
this allows us to draw up a family tree for the Doncaster-Kirkleatham-Skelton
Line
of Farndales.
George Farndale was the second sibling of four, and in
all probability was the son of William and Margaret (nee Atkinson). George is
the first of our direct ancestors, about whose life we can confidently record.
He seems to have moved to Moorsholm, about three miles from Skelton, by
1592. He married Margery Nelson in 1595. They had five children, one of whom
was another George Farndaile, born in 1602. George had four
children, and the second was Nicholas Farndale. Nicholas was baptised on 6 July 1634
and married Elizabeth in about 1660, with whom he had four children. He paid a
hearth tax for one hearth at Liverton in the 1660s to 1680s. Elizabeth died
in 1670 and Nicholas remarried an Elizabeth Bennison on 23 November 1676.
Nicholas died in 1694. Nicholas Farndale is the founder of the line we have
called the Liverton 2 Line.
It is from this point that the Lines
which lead to modern Farndales, start to diverge,
From Nicholas’ first
marriage was born the ancestor of some other lines of modern Farndales, George Farndale, whose son William
Farndale was founder of the Kilton 2 Line.
From Nicholas’ second marriage was born my own
ancestor, John Farndale, and founder of the Kilton 1 Line.
Common history of all
modern Farndales
Modern
Farndales are descendants of the Kilton 1 Line, the Kilton 2 Line, the Ampleforth Line and a group of the Whitby Farndales. Subject to some comments about the
Ampleforth and Whitby families, that means that all those whose name is
Farndales, or who descend from Farndales, share the history I have recorded so
far, and can:
1. trace their direct ancestry back to
Kirkleatham and the early sixteenth century;
2. almost certainly trace their ancestry
back directly to Doncaster and the early fourteenth century;
3. trace their indirect ancestry back to
the villeins of Farndale in the early fourteenth century and those who
emigrated out from Farndale;
4. imagine their further ancestors swirling
within the primeval swamp of Bronze Age Beaker Folk, Iron Age Settlers,
Brigantes, Romans, Vikings, Angles and Saxons that had roamed the moors and
Dales of Yorkshire since about 9,000 years BCE; and
5. identify their geographic routes in the
Saxon lands of Chirchebi that would become Kirkbymoorside
and the valley called Farndale where Edmund the Hermit roamed when those lands
first became visible in 1154.
The branching of Lines
From
the early seventeenth century, the family started to diverge. Between the mid
sixteenth century and the early eighteenth century, I have only found Farndales
north of the North York moors in Cleveland. For that reason, I think it likely
that the perhaps single family (the Doncaster-Kirkleatham-Skelton
Line) who we have seen moved into Cleveland
in the mid sixteenth century, were the ancestors to all the family lines who
started to diverge to Whitby and around Cleveland from the early seventeenth
century and then some back south of the North York Moors around Ampleforth in
the early eighteen century.
Broadly, the family started to diverge
along four main branch lines, which in time would further diverge into smaller
family lines:
·
A
family emerged in Whitby,
and engaged in the maritime life of the port. We can call the larger family the
W1 Family, who diverged into the Whitby 1 Line, the Whitby 2 Line and the Whitby 4 Line.
·
A
family settled in the village of Kilton and later diverged across Cleveland,
Stockton, Northumberland, and to Wales and Surrey and to California. We can
call the larger family the K2 family.
·
Another
family settled in the village of Kilton and later diverged into the biggest
group. This family would expand across Cleveland, Great
Ayton,
Whitby, Bishop Auckland, Richmond, Thirsk, Tidkinhow on the moors, Wensleydale and to
London, Wales, Bradford, Wakefield,
Holderness, Jarrow, and to Ontario, Newfoundland and Alberta in Canada, USA, Australia and New
Zealand.
We can call the larger family the K1 family.
·
A
family emerged around Coxwold and Ampleforth in the early eighteenth century
and later diverged to the wider area around York, including Malton and Huttons
Ambo, and to Thornaby, Stockton, Bradford, Leeds, Cheshire, Norwich, and to USA
and New Zealand. The hub of this family is the Ampleforth 1 Line. We can call the larger family the A1
family.
The divergence
of these families can be seen in the second family Timeline, and the
different main families can be differentiated by the tags A1, K1, K2, and W1.
The
divergence of the whole family can be seen in 88 family lines into which this genealogy has divided
the wider family The family lines can be navigated like an underground railway
map and you can change lines to trace your own history or that of a particular
family. There is an interface
chart which acts like a
general underground map.
Martin
Farndale had originally ordered the family in a chronological list by date of
birth, which he called the Farndale Directory. This directory also provides a means
to navigate the family, particularly if you want to start by finding an
individual (or maybe yourself), from which to explore the ancestry. As a rule the research only provides the most basic information
about living Farndales; generally year of birth and link to direct ancestors,
so that there is enough to link in to and explore the historical ancestry. The
website is intended only to provide a ‘way in’ for living Farndales to the
historical research. The detail starts with our forebears, no longer with us.
Each individual member of the family has
his or her own webpage. As well as a historical record, this also provides a
remembrance for each member of our family beyond a stone monument. The research
tries to tell as full a story as is possible of every Farndale.
So
from this point, the Farndale family remains related, but the family’s stories
diverge. Yet we are all very likely the ancestral descendants of Nicholas and
Agnes, and perhaps of William, the vicar of Doncaster. So
the historical record which now follows tells the extraordinary story of
multiple adventures and achievements of a significant body of folk who followed
their own distinct paths. Wouldn’t Nicholas and Agnes (and perhaps Sir William
of Doncaster) be proud, if only we could share these following stories with
them?
From this point
the second Farndale
Timeline for the modern period from 1600 to the present day,
accompanies this introduction.
The Whitby Farndales
On 19 November 1661, John Farndale of Whitby married Alice Peckock at Whitby
Parish Church. Whilst I have not traced his parents, it seems very probable
that he descended from the Farndales of Cleveland who we have already met, and
that this was a family who moved naturally from the Cleveland countryside to
the port town of Whitby.
So it is very likely that this Whitby family were
descended from the Cleveland Farndales who we have already met.
John and Alice
are the Founders of the Whitby 1 Line, from which the Whitby 2 Line and the Whitby 4 Line descend.
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1636
to 1832
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1711 to 1827
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1773 to 1938 Whitby and around |
Those Farndales
who are descendants of the Whitby 1, 2 and 4 Lines, can be identified in the timeline
by the annotation W1. This
maritime family included:
·
Giles Farndale (W1), the Whitby 1 Line
was press ganged into the navy in Whitby, at the age of 27 and died at sea on
board HMS Experiment in the Caribbean having almost certainly fought in
the Battle for Cartagena de Indias, during the War of Jenkins’ Ear.
·
John Farndale, (W1), founder of the Whitby 2 Line was a seaman named in a list of
42 of the crew of The Friendship of Whitby when James Cook was Mate (later the famous
Captain Cook).
·
John Christopher Farndale the Elder, (W1), the Whitby 4 Line was Master Mariner of Cragg, Whitby
about whom we have extensive records of his mercantile adventures,
who died aged only 37.
·
Robert Farndale, (W1), the Whitby 2 Line was buried at St Mary the
Virgin Churchyard, Whitby, the setting for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, along
with several Whitby Farndales.
·
John Christopher Farndale the
Younger, (W1), the Whitby 4 Line, later a ship’s captain who was
charged for absence as an apprentice, was later involved in many maritime mercantile adventures,
but was lost at sea in the Bay of Biscay in 1868.
·
William Farndale (W1), the Whitby 4 Line was a Master Mariner like his
father and brother with extensive records of his commercial maritime journeys
as Captain of various ships including the William and Nancy.
·
This
was a family of mariners at the heart of the maritime coal industry in the mid Victorian era. The second generation ventured widely
around the North Sea (often called the German sea at the time) and the Baltic
and further south.
·
John Thomas Farndale, (W1), the Whitby 4 Line was manager of the Thirsk
Branch of the York Union Bank and a free mason. He was a member of the naturalists society of Thirsk. He was involved with the
Church. He was involved in the cycling club. He was a member of the Thirsk
chess club. He was involved with the National Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Children. He was involved with a historic pageant and play. He continued to take an interest in Whitby,
where he exported his pageant ideas to. He was a member of the National Service
League (campaigning by 1911 to introduce compulsory military training).
The Ampleforth Farndales
Elias Farndale was born, perhaps around Thirsk, in or
about 1733. He married Elizabeth Raper at Thirsk on 28 February 1753. He is
Founder of the Ampleforth 1
Line. Because I have not yet been able to identify his
parents, I cannot directly link him, and his descendants into the wider family.
It is possible he was not related to the Farndales who arrived in Cleveland by
about 1567. However the fact that I have only found
evidence of Farndales in the immediate centuries after 1567 in Cleveland, means
that I think it is highly probable that Elias (and therefore his descendants)
are somehow linked to the families in Cleveland who we know about in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In other words
Elias is probably descended from the known family above, but we have just not
yet managed to prove that or establish exactly how he links in. There is a
‘missing link’ here, but it is still probable that he is part of the same
family we have met above.
So, Elias is
the Founder of the Ampleforth 1 Line
which branches into a significant part of the modern Farndale family
(the lines with ** are contemporary lines which still have family members alive
today):
|
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1728 to Date
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1788 to Date
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1826 to Date Leeds and around |
1849 to 1993
|
1927 to Date South Australia,
Northern Territory |
1936 to Date Thornaby and more
widely |
|
1875 to 1948 Wetherby, York,
Northallerton |
1910 to Date Bradford and
around |
|
1870 to 1933 Norwich and area,
and New Zealand |
1911 to Date New Zealand |
1912 to 1945 Uxbridge and area |
Those Farndales
who are descendants of the Ampleforth 1 Line can be identified in the timeline
by the annotation A1. This family included:
·
William Farndale (A1), the Ampleforth 1 Line the sub post master at Huttons Ambo, near Malton, saved a child from
drowning in the river at Huttons Ambo.
·
Herbert Arthur Farndale (A1), the Norwich Line was a mustard packer in Norwich.
·
Private William Farndale (A1), the Ampleforth 1 Line
who joined the Royal Army Medical Corps and later the Lancashire Volunteers.
Later, he was an agent for Prudential Assurance by 1939.
·
Private James Farndale, (A1), the Ampleforth 1 Line
who joined the 1st Devonshire Regiment and later the Wiltshire
Regiment in 1914. He served in Egypt in 1915. Reminiscent of the War Horse
play, he worked in animal husbandry in both World Wars and tended horses in WW1
and his War Service years were 31 August 1914 to 10 March 1919 and then from
1939 to 1941.
·
Lance Corporal George Weighill Farndale,
(A1), the Bishop Wilton Line
joined the West Yorkshire Regiment and was an
infantryman in the first world war. He was killed in action at Arras during the
Third Battle of the Scarpe. He had also served in Egypt in 1915.
· Lance Corporal Herbert Arthur Farndale (A1), the Norwich Line, of the Norfolk Yeomanry, the Northamptonshire Regiment and later the Royal Berkshire Regiment, was wounded in October 1917.
·
By
1917 James Arthur Farndale, (A1), the Bishop Wilton Line,
was a drawing foreman at the Saltaire Mills at Shipley now in north
Bradford. Due to the importance of his work, he was excused military duties at
consecutive military tribunal hearings. James became a dominant person in the
Saltaire community. He was later manager of the drawing room until he retired
in 1942. He was a keen cricketer and a life member of the Saltaire cricket
club, voluntarily tending its ground for five seasons. He died in 1952 on a bus
returning from a football match. The Saltaire Mills
were a Victorian ‘model village’ in Shipley to the north of Bradford. The site
is now a World Heritage Site. James Arthur Farndale, and his
descendants (see the
Bradford 2 Line) were influential in its history.
·
By
1921, John W Farndale, (A1), the Bishop Wilton Line
was a gardener for Lord Allerton at the Firs, Wetherby. His daughter
with his first wife Annie Thomspon, Lily Farndale had been tragically killed
when playing ball in 1933. His second
wife Jane Wade aroused the neighbourhood when there was a fire at the village
smithy at Walton in 1952. John is the Founder of the Wetherby 1 Line.
·
By
1934, Wilfred Farndale,
(A1), the Bishop Wilton Line,
was the Sanitary Inspector for Shipley. Quiet and unassuming, and a successful
cricketer in the Shipley team, he was a very popular member of the community.
He gave lectures and wrote about his work, which is all recorded on his
webpage. He was also elected President of the Shipley Branch of the National
and Local Government Association and President of the Shipley Rotary Club. He
married Kathleen Dawson. Wilfred is the Founder of the Bradford 2 Line.
·
Private James Farndale, (A1), of the Stockton 3 Line, of the West Yorkshire
Regiment, died of wounds on 16 March 1941 in Eritrea. James is buried at Keren
War Cemetery.
The Kilton 2 Farndales
Of the routes
we can be certain about, William Farndale was founder of the Kilton 2 Line. The Kilton 2 Line branches into a segment of the
modern Farndale family, of which several lines (denoted by **) still have
family members alive today.
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1690 to 1841
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1739 to 1833
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1772 to 1917 Loftus, Brotton,
Whitby, Marske, Middlesbrough |
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The George
Farndale part of the Loftus 2 Line
** 1843 to Date
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1796 to Date
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1814 to Date Stockton,
Middlesbrough and more widely |
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1914 to 1944 Surrey, Sussex |
1932 to Date California,
Oklahoma, Arizona, Washington |
1934 to 1966 Pontypridd,
Glamorganshire |
1913 to Date Northumberland |
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Those Farndales
who are descendants of the Kilton 2 Line can be identified in the timeline
by the annotation K2. This Kilton family included:
·
William Farndale (K2), the
founder of the Loftus 1 Line
was elected and sworn as a constable for Loftus in 1781.
·
William Leng Farndale (K2), of the Stockton 1 Line became a Sergeant in the Northumberland
Hussars by 1902. That Regiment served in the Boer War, so he may have served
there.
·
George William Farndale (K2) of the Loftus 2 Line enlisted on 10 December 1915
and became a clerk in the Army Pay Corps at Blackheath. After the Great War,
her was a shipping clerk with George Alder Limited in Middlesbrough.
·
Sergeant Bernard Farndale (K2), 115th
Squadron RAF, was killed in action over Denmark on 30 August 1944. On the night
before 30 August 1944 nearly 600 RAF bombers flew over Denmark on bombing raids
to Königsberg and Stettin. Particularly the planes for Stettin were attacked by
German night fighters, when they were passing the
northern part of Jutland and the Kattegat. Avro Lancaster Bomber LAN ME718 was
hit and flew for a moment through the air before it crashed like a burning
torch at Oue (about 400 m west of Rinddalsvej in Denmark). All
of the bomb load exploded on impact. All of the
crew were killed. The Germans did not want to collect the bodies and left them
in the field. The locals were appalled by this behaviour and collected the
remains in wickerwork baskets. The Wehrmacht ordered the Danes to hand the
baskets over, and these were thrown in the crater at the crash site and
covered. When the Germans had left the area, the locals together with members
of the Civil Air Defence opened the crater and placed the remains in a coffin
which was driven to Oue church. A memorial still stands to the dead airmen at
Oue.
·
John Alan Farndale, the American 3 Line (K2) saw
service during the Korean War in the Royal Air Force.
The Kilton 1 Farndales
The other
certain path to family Lines of the modern family derive from John Farndale, the founder of the
Kilton 1 Line.
John Farndale son of Nicholas Farndale, of the Liverton 2 Line (which Line preceded both K1 and K2),
married Elizabeth Bennison at Brotton on 5 February 1705. By then he was living
in Kilton and was one of the first members of the family, with his brother George Farndale (founder of the Kilton 2 Line), to live in Kilton.
John and Elizabeth were the founders of the Kilton 1 Line,
a core hub for the development of the history of the wider family.
The Kilton 1 Line branches
into a very significant part of the modern Farndale family (the lines with **
are contemporary lines which still have family members alive today):
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1680 to 1973
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1743 to 1797 Whitby, Lythe |
1753 to 1790 Brotton, Skelton |
1788 to Date
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The Australia 1
(Birregurra) Line 1793 to 1923 Birregurra and
Victoria, Australia
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1795 to 1953
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1795 to 2005
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1822 to 1989 Bishop Auckland,
Newcastle |
1827 to 1984
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1836 to Date Ontario via the
Crimean War |
1845 to 1992
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1850 to 1974
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1875 to Date
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The John Farndale
part of the Loftus 2 Line ** 1848 to Date
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1883 to 1928
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1922 to Date Wetherby, Thirsk,
Northallerton |
Hartlepool and
more widely |
1890 to 1934 Illinois, Iowa,
Wisconsin |
1885 to Date California, Texas |
1897 to Date Wensleydale and
more widely |
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1940 to Date Wales particularly
Glamorganshire |
1886 to Date Newfoundland |
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1907 to Date London and Sussex |
1911 to Date London, Bedford,
Northampton, Essex |
1921 to Date London |
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The Robert
Farndale part of the Wakefield 1 Line
** 1885 to date
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1894 to Date Thirsk,
Northallerton, Richmond |
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The Thomas
Farndale part of the Wakefield 1
Line 1839 to 2002 Wakefield and more
widely
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1849 to 1993
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1909 to Date Nottingham and
more widely |
1914 to Date Holderness, Hull |
1947 to Date Wide geographical
spread |
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1909 to Date Bradford,
Chesterfield |
1904 to 1943 South Shields,
Bradford |
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1919 to Date New Zealand,
particularly Masterton |
1940 to Date Cambridge, London,
Middlesex |
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1871 to 1912 Ontario, Canada |
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1866 to Date London and more
widely |
1886 to Date Leicester,
Nottingham and more widely |
1916 to 1945 Bradford |
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Those Farndales
who are descendants of the Kilton 1 Line, can be identified by the annotation K1 in the timeline. This is by far the largest hub of the family
and included:
·
Johnny Farndale (“Old Farndale of Kilton”), (K1), the Kilton 1 Line had moved to How Hill Farm on the Wharton
Estate at Kilton,
a farmer and a merchant who was involved in the alum trade and later told tales
of smugglers at Cat Nab at Old Saltburn.
·
Wiliam Farndale, (K1), the Kilton 1 Line, a farmer and merchant of
Kilton like his father, who pulled down Kilton Lodge to build his new home, and
imported rods, coals and bacon at Cat Nab from sloops out to sea.
·
John Farndale, (K1), the Kilton 1 Line, saved by his buckle from
tumbling down a well, an author of many books about Kilton and the
wider area, narrator of Victorian innovation, poet after the Battle of
Waterloo, an agent, and the subject of many great stories.
·
Matthew Farndale (K1), the Kilton 1 Line, with his wife Hannah, his
daughter Mary Ann Martin and her new husband William Martin, and their youngest
daughter Elizabeth Farndale, left Liverpool on the Argo, bound for Melbourne,
Australia. The voyage took 103 days or just over 14 weeks. Thus started the Australia 1 Line. You can read more about the Australian Farndales and about the Martin family.
·
John George Farndale, (K1), the Kilton 1 Line, took part in the Crimean War and there are
letters from him from Sebastopol on his web page. He served in the 28th of
Foot, a Yorkshire Regiment and may have transferred to that Regiment from the
Coldstream Guards. His descriptive letters show that he took part in the
battles of Alma, Balaclava and Inkerman and was at the Siege of Sebastopol. He
later emigrated to Canada. There is an unsubstantiated story that he went to
Australia first. He is the Founder of the Ontario 1 Line.
·
William Masterman Farndale,(K1), the Kilton 1 Line was an officer of HM Customs, a tide waiter at
Cleveland port who discovered a fire on the ship Hydrus in Middlesbrough
and caused the fire to be extinguished to save the vessel, though the captain
was found ‘burnt to a cinder’ in his cabin.
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John Henry Farndale, (K1) the Great Ayton 3 Line, was killed by a fall or
ironstone at the Poston Mines,
Ormesby.
·
Martin Farndale, (K1), the Kilton 1 Line, farmed 600 acres at Kilton Hall
Farm with 16 employees.
·
Charles Farndale (K1), the Kilton 1 Line took
over Kilton from
Martin Farndale,
his uncle, since
Martin had no children of his own. Charles was a farmer at Kilton of 207 acres
by 1851, with 9 employees, and later 577 acres. He was a methodist: “For
very many years services have been held in the spacious farm kitchen of Mr C
Farndale, Kilton Lodge, which was also that of his father before him. Methodism
in the neighbourhood, and the cause of righteousness generally, owes much to
the high Christian character and active interest in all good works displayed by
this devoted Methodist family.”
·
Joseph Farndale the Older,
(K1), the Whitby 5 Line was Chief Constable of
Birmingham City Police and involved in the Fenian Dynamite Conspiracy with a
peak of activity in 1883. An article in the Birmingham Daily Post on 18 April
1942, suggests that the British habit of forming an orderly queue was down to
Joseph.
·
Joseph Farndale CBE KPM, nephew of Joseph the Elder, (K1), the Wakefield 1 Line
became Chief Constable of Bradford City Police Force. Joseph was
involved in a new system for using fingerprints in 1903; a campaign to supress
scurrilous picture postcards in 1904; meeting the Prince and Princess of Wales
in 1904; the earliest use of a speed trap in 1905; the prohibition of the
shocking ‘posings’ of the actress Pansy Montague, ‘La Milo’ in Bradford in
1907; managing strikes and street violence in Bradford in 1913; dealing with an
epidemic of ‘bad language’ by children in Bradford in 1914; enforcing the
control of the possession of homing pigeons in Bradford during World War 1
under the Defence of the Realm Act 1914 and in enforcing the Aliens Restriction
(Change of Name) Order 1914; welcoming
Belgian refugees in Bradford in 1914; making arrangements for public house
licencing during World War 1; a parade exhibiting a captured 77mm German field
gun lost at the Battle of Loos, in 1915; meeting the King and Queen in Shipley
in 1918; and managing street congestion in 1924. Joseph was the inventor of the
Police Box in 1929 in Bradford. He proposed the use of miniature police
stations, kiosk shaped and equipped with a telephone, desk and red warning
light to provide a police service at a hundred points in the City,
instead of the present twelve points. So but for
Joseph Farndale, Dr Who would not have had his tardis.
·
William Farndale, (K1), the Whitby 5 Line an ironstone miner
in Loftus,
and founder of the Loftus 3 Line, witnessed the death of
his colleague, Henry Durham, in the Loftus mines.
·
Samuel Farndale, (K1), the Wakefield 1 Line,
and brother of Joseph Farndale the Younger, later the
Chief Constable of Bradford, was a humourist (the ‘comedian’ of the family)
appearing at soirees in Wakefield
in 1889.
·
Samuel (Kirk) Farndale, (K1), the Loftus 3 Line, travelled from Liverpool to Quebec on SS
Sardinian. He settled in Oshawa, Ontario. He became a farmer at Brooklin,
Pickering, Ontario. The locality in Ontario was clearly settled from his
compatriots from the same area, since the towns there
bore names like Pickering and Whitby Township. Kirk and his wife Mary were
founders of the Ontario 2 Line.
·
John William Farndale MRCS Eng, LRCP Lond, (K1), the Whitby 5 Line was registered as a medical
practitioner and worked in Ba in the Fiji Islands in 1901.
·
John Martin Farndale, (K1), the Loftus 2 Line, who had lived at Loftus and was
a grocery store manager at Guisborough married Bessie Stainthorpe
and they went to Newfoundland just after they were married.
John was a grocery store manager in St John’s, Newfoundland. John and Bessie
were founders of the Newfoundland Line.
·
James Farndale (A1), the Stockton 3 Line was a Druid in Stockton in 1909. He worked in Stockton in the iron and
steam engine works.
·
James (“Jim”) Farndale, (K1), the Tidkinhow Line, went to Canada in 1911, the year before the
Titanic Sank. There is a transcript of Jim’s
diary recording his emigration to Canada. In 1911 James
arrived to stay with Martin Farndale in Alberta. He did not stay
long in Canada before he went to America for the rest of his life. He was
involved with the Carpenter’s Union on the Boulder dam project and later was
elected a Senator for Nevada. He was a great man of American politics.
·
George William Farndale, (K1), the Coatham Line, who
had been a road labourer and plumber in Coatham, emigrated to USA. He married
Frances Hilton in New York of Chicago in about 1915, but she died from swine
flu in 1918. He saw service in the First World War. He later married Rose
Cunningham in Clinton, Iowa in 1921. He became a naturalised citizen of USA on
16 May 1934. George founded the American 2 Line. George was later a teacher in vocational
education in Milwaukie, Wisconsin.
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John George Farndale, (K1), the Hartlepool 1 Line was
Treasurer of the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes (“the Buffs”) in
Hartlepool.
·
As
President of the Primitive Methodist Conference in 1947 Rev Dr William Edward
Farndale, (K1), the Whitby 5 Line, and founder of the William Line, sounded the Call of the Countryside and
launched a “Back to the Soil” campaign.
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Florence
Farndale, wife of Rev Dr William Edward Farndale, (K1), the Whitby 5 Line was President of the North
Eastern Federation of Suffragettes. She campaigned for ‘why women need the
vote’. She was later very involved with the British Women’s Total
Abstinence Union.
·
Lieutenant Graham Price, a World War 1 Flying Ace, the younger
brother of Florence Farndale, wife of Rev Dr William Edward
Farndale, (K1), the Whitby 5 Line was killed in action over the east coast of
Scotland in a duel with a German aeroplane at 8,000 feet.
·
Corporal William Farndale,
(K1) the Great Ayton 3
Line enlisted
at Stokesley into the Yorkshire Regiment on 12 October 1914 and arrived in
France on 27 August 1915. In a letter home in October 1915, he joked that since
he was in France, he had the Germans on the run. He served in France and Italy
and came home on leave in August 1918. He was 5 feet and 7.5 inches tall. He
was discharged in December 1920 with a 30% disablement from the War.
·
Herbert Farndale, (K1), the Craggs Line was
enlisted into 2/4th Battalion, Alexandra, Princess of Wales’s Own
(Yorkshire Regiment) and undertook training. He was 23, a farmer, 5 feet
and 6.5 inches tall and weight 140 lbs, of good
physical development. Later Sergeant Herbert Farndale, 10th Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment and later the 2nd Battalion the West
Yorkshire Regiment, was awarded the Military Medal for gallantry and the
British War Medal and the Victory Medal. His Military Medal for bravery arose for
service from 11 August 1915 to 30 June 1916 and particularly on 1 July 1916,
with the Expeditionary Force in France. He was commissioned in 1918. Herbert
later lived at Craggs Hall Farm and on 3 September 1940 the farmhouse received
a direct hit by a German bomb. The house was rebuilt. Herbert was an
independent Councillor, a member of Skelton and Brotton urban council.
·
Alfred Farndale (K1), the Tidkinhow Line,
and founder of the Wensleydale Line,
enlisted into the Machine Gun Corps. He served in France, Mesopotamia (Iraq)
and India. He served at Ypres. He and Quartermaster Sergeant Zaccarelli had
been galloping up to the Front with an ammunition limber when the Germans
started to shell them. Zaccarelli was killed, along with a horse. Alfred
managed to cut the dead horse free, drag Zaccarelli’s body into a ditch and
carry on up to the Front on one horse with his delivery of ammunition. Alfred
later emigrated to Alberta and they settled at Huxley
and built their house there. They returned to Yorkshire after the Great
Depression and the family farmed in Wensleydale.
·
Private (John) Richard Farndale, (K1), the Coatham Line, died at 21st
Casualty Clearing Station at La Neuville of pneumonia. He enlisted at Redcar, and joined the 1/4th (TA) Battalion of the Princess
of Wales’ Own Yorkshire Regiment, also known as the Green Howards. At the time
of his death the battalion was not in the line but in reserve at Proyart. On 31
Dec 1916 it was at Bazentin le Petit and in reserve at Flers on 7 Jan 1917. On
11 Jan the battalion moved to the front line at ‘Hexham Road.’ It was again in
the front line from 30 Jan to 11 Feb at Genercourt. The battalion moved to
Proyart on 19 Feb 1917. Richard was awarded the British War Medal and the
Victory Medal posthumously on 21 Jan 1921. He was presumably badly wounded at
Hexham Road or Genercourt or Proyart and evacuated to No 21 Casualty Clearing
Station at La Neuville, where he later died of pneumonia.
·
Private George Farndale, (K1), the Whitby 5 Line, was killed in action on 27 May 1917, during the Battle of
Arras, barely a month after arriving in France. He was serving with the 1st/9th
(Territorial Glasgow Highlanders) Battalion of the Highland Light Infantry in
100th Infantry Brigade of 33rd Infantry Division in operations against the
Hindenburg Line. He was 26 years old. On his web-page,
you will find extensive correspondence and records about his service and
correspondence.
·
William Farndale, (K1), the Tidkinhow Line had arrived
in Canada in 1913, and he went to Early Grey in Saskatchewan where he was a
butcher. He then served in the
Canadian Army in WW1 and was wounded in action at Vimy Ridge on 13 December
1916. Still weakened from his wounds, he died of the flu epidemic shortly after
the War ended, having insisted on transporting patients with flu to hospital.
· James (“Jim”) Farndale had enlisted into the US Army on 31 August 1917 and he served in France until 1918. He was discharged on 1 August 1919. His younger brother, William Farndale, had enlisted into the Canadian army. His youngest brother, Alfred Farndale, had enlisted into the British Army. So three brothers served in the British, US and Canadian army.
· Private Robert Farndale, (K1) the Hartlepool 1 Line was in the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. He was wounded in 1917 and later joined the Labour Corps. He was admitted to the Fourth Stationary Hospital and discharged on 15 April 1918.
·
Henry Farndale (K1), the Wakefield 1 Line
was a Regimental Quarter Master Sergeant in the Royal Field Artillery who was
gassed in November 1917. Before the War he was a solicitor’s clerk and
engineer’s draughtsman. In 1920 the Army proposed that he transfer to the Corps
of Military Accountants, but he discharged from the army in Woolwich that year.
·
Gunner John William Farndale (K1), the Wakefield 1 Line was severely wounded by a gas shell
explosion and was admitted to a field hospital in Rouen in 1918 and then to the
General Hospital at Leicester. He was later a leather salesman and founded the Leicester 1 Line.
·
Albert Farndale, (K1), the Kilton 1 Line was an architect who
tragically shot himself at Kilton in December 1918.
·
Mark Farndale, (K1), the Ontario 1 Line, a farmer who had
married Mary Wiltse in Ontario in 1908, died from the flu epidemic on 29
November 1918.
·
George William Farndale (K1), the Great Ayton 2 Line,
became a well known comic actor. There are
extensive records of his performances on his web page. He regularly performed
with the Yorkshire Mummers and sang comic songs.
·
Grace Farndale (K1), the Tidkinhow Line, was assistant
matron at the Towers Boarding School for Girls at Saltburn
by the Sea. Grace was later a matron at Malvern and then emigrated to Alberta
where she and her husband Howard Holmes had a ranch.
· William Farndale, (K1), the Craggs Line moved to Plane Tree Farm at Maunby, Thirsk where William and Mary farmed for forty years. They were founders of the Thirsk Line. William chaired the Northallerton Branch of the National Farmers Union and had an active role in negotiations during the Second World War to get the most from the land.
·
John Joseph Farndale, (K1), the Great Ayton 2 Line, was a joiner and part of
the Ayton cricket team.
·
John William Farndale, (K1), the South Shields 2 Line was the youngest member of
the 185 men who set off on the Jarrow marches in 1936.
·
Audrey Celina McKelvie (nee Farndale), (K1), the Ontario 1 Line was a
comptometer operator with the Hudson Bay Company.
·
Thomas Henry Farndale, (K1), the London 1 Line was a detective sergeant, later
an Inspector, a real life ‘Foyle’s War’, who solved crimes during the Second
World War in Surrey. He was involved investigating a serious crime involving
the murder of a maid by three soldiers. He continued to solve crimes until he
retired in 1955. His experiences were well recorded in the media and in a
record of his service in the Surrey Mirror on 4 November 1955. After he retired
from the police, he was a licensee of the Plough Inn at Dormansland and later
President of the Caterham Licensed Victuallers Association.
·
Wilfred (or “Wilf”) Farndale, (A1), the Stockton 3 Line
lived at Filton, near Bristol, with his wife Doris Eveyln nee Howard. Wilf later worked with the Bristol Aircraft
Company making aircraft jigs, the framework on which aircraft were built. He
was involved with the Brabazon, Britannia and early stage of Concorde designs.
He was a football referee. The family then emigrated to New Zealand and founded
the New Zealand 2 Line.
·
Private
Richard (“Dick”) Farndale, (K1), the American 2 Line attested into the army on
28 March 1941 at Chicago, Illinois and served in the US Army during World War
II, spending more than four years in the Pacific theatre of Operation. He was a
mechanic with the 43rd Division.
·
Hazel Jane Farndale (“Janie”), (K1), the American 1 Line married John Elif Rydell.
John was a Master Sergeant in the US Air Force during WW2 and Korea. Janey
later lived in Austin, Texas and was a regular visitor to the family in
Yorkshire.
·
Ronald Martin Farndale, (K1), the Wakefield 1 Line had emigrated to New
Zealand and served in 6th Field Ambulance, Royal Army Medical Corps
in Greece and Crete, before he was captured at the Battle of Sidi Rezegh in
1941 and became a Prisoner of War. He later became a builder and carpenter in
Masterton, near Auckland, New Zealand and founded the New Zealand 1 Line.
·
Sergeant William Derrick Farndale, (K1), the Whitby 5 Line was a patrol member in the
Withernsea Patrol on the East Yorkshire Coast from 1942 until 3 December 1944.
·
Jimmy Farndale, (K1), the American 1 Line enlisted into the US Army
on 15 December 1942 and served in the US Army Air Corps. In 1952 he flew around
the world visiting all continents by plane.
·
Raymond W S Farndale, (K1), the Newfoundland Line served in 59th
(Newfoundland) Heavy Regiment Royal Artillery and was commissioned into the
Royal Artillery in September 1943. The regiment trained in Northumberland but
by July1944 it was at Worthing in Sussex. It went to France and took part in
the battles for Caen. By VE-Day it was at Hamburg. Lieutenant RWS Farndale RA
went back to Canada in September 1945 with the Defence Medal, the 1939-45 Star
and War Medal with a Mention in Dispatches. He joined 166th (Newfoundland)
Field Regiment RCA (Reserve) and was with them until 1954, retiring as a Major,
earning the Canadian Forces decoration (CD). He became an accountant and lived
at St Johns, Corner Brook, Toronto and Halifax.
·
On
11 May 1945, only three days after VE day, Henry Stewart Farndale (K1), the Wakefield 1 Line
died as a pilot in training in a Tiger Moth over Leeds.
·
General
Sir Martin Farndale KCB (K1), the Wensleydale Line joined the Indian Army on 3 September 1946,
transferred to the British Army in 1947 and went to the Royal Military Academy
Sandhurst where he was commissioned into the Royal Artillery. He served in
Egypt, Germany, Malaya, South Arabia, Ireland. He commanded The Chestnut Troop,
1st Regiment RHA, 7th Armoured Brigade, 2nd Armoured Division, 1st British
Corps and Northern Army Group. He became Commander-in-Chief British Army of the
Rhine and Master Gunner St James’s Park. He was awarded General Service Medal with
clasps for Malaya, South Arabia and Northern Ireland, the Silver Jubilee Medal
in 1977, and was made a Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1980 and Knight
Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1983. He was awarded the 125th
Anniversary of Canada Medal for services to Canada and an Honorary Degree of
Literature at Greenwich University.
·
Major
William Arthur James Farndale, (K1), the William Line was called to the bar by the
Middle Temple. He was later a Chairman of the Governors of Dovedale Manor
School in Camberwell. He regularly gave lectures and became involved later in
residential care.
The diverse experiences of
the family can be seen with more detail in the second timeline,
and by delving deeper into the website. The website records the many
achievements, struggles, lives and relationships
within our family over the centuries. Some have enjoyed full lives and
collectively the descendants of the medieval and early Farndales such as Nicholas have a rich history of
accomplishment. Others have struggled, such as those who moved from the country
to settle in the town of Whitby, some depending on Poor Law
support. Some died very young, or at birth. Each has his or her own page, so
that each member of our family is recorded for their life and role in society.
The intention is that every historic Farndale will have a place on this
website. Although in the Twenty First Century, the family has diverse and broad
interests, we can perhaps summarise the historic Farndales, as farmers, pioneers
and soldiers, with many also taking to the sea, working
in ironstone mines in Cleveland and in many other
occupations.
Social Historical Context
Whilst ancestor
hunters might secretly like to search for their aristocratic forebears, what we
find is the privilege of something much richer, of ordinary folk, the engine
room of British society and their stories. What we find are stories of
endeavours, ordeals, passion, adventure, pioneering, and real life The rich
history of this single family, stretching through British history from the
Norman Conquest, through the age of rural serfdom, the Black Death and the
emergence of a more powerful workforce, associations with the legend of Robin
Hood, centuries of rural life, the industrial revolution and rapid social
change, into the horrors of the First and Second World Wars, and the era of the
Cold War, provides a direct historical perspective of social change over twelve
centuries of British history.
A note on research methods
Parish records
were introduced in England by Thomas Cromwell, the lawyer and Chief Minister to
Henry VIII (and well known to us through the historical novels of Hilary
Mantel) on 5 September 1538. After 1538, family historians are
able to rely on extensive records of births, marriages and deaths, which
provide a framework upon which to build accurate genealogies. So from that date it is generally possible to compile
factually accurate family history. The practical date for the availability of
parish records is generally taken to be the start of the reign of Elizabeth I
in 1558.
Before
1538/1558, the genealogist’s task is much harder. Extensive records still exist
back to the Norman Conquest and the Domesday book. However
gaps in evidence are inevitable. Nevertheless, with a unique locative surname
like Farndale, it is still possible to navigate these more difficult sources
and build up an impressive history.
Martin Farndale, Richard’s father, began his research into the family’s
history in 1956. Before the age of computers and databases, he travelled around
north Yorkshire, taking hand notes from Parish records, and compiling extensive
card indexes, and achieved a remarkable history of the family, and had already
identified the heart of the history back to the Norman Conquest. That Martin
was the commander of the Northern Army Group of NATO (the north half of NATO’s
defensive line) at the heart of the Cold War and wrote the history of the Royal
Artillery along with an exhausting portfolio of other interests and still found
time to undertake this family research is remarkable. He died in 2000.
Richard Farndale, his son and the author of this website, took the baton
from Martin in 2000. The Data Age blossomed from 2000, so that records could be
analysed and compiled electronically and over time national databases of
historical material became more easily available so that searches could be
undertaken with exponential efficiency compared to what was possible in the
second half of the twentieth century. After a decade as an artillery officer,
Richard spent a quarter century as a lawyer, and dispute resolution and the
assessment of evidence were the heart of Richard’s professional career. That
has helped Richard to work through the previous research, build on it, but also
assess it evidentially and work on the robustness of the historical record.
A lawyer
generally recognises two standards of evidence. The standard used in criminal
cases is ‘beyond reasonable doubt’, that is that facts are as near to certain as can be. The standard used in civil cases is
‘on a balance of probabilities’, that is ‘more likely than not’ or about 50%
likely.
The research
has tended to adopt the principle that for the post 1538 history of the
family, there is no reason why the history cannot be built up to meet the
higher test, beyond reasonable doubt. So the record is
built on recorded facts, and there are generally no, or very few gaps, where
guesses have to be made.
A litigator
also understands the importance of contemporaneous evidence over retrospective
evidence. In building up a factual narrative, it is always sounder to base the
work on the direct evidence that was recorded at the time.
The approach to
our history before 1538 has been, so far as possible, to build the
framework of events to the same standard, beyond reasonable doubt. In other words the primary focus has been to find physical evidence
from the recorded history, to provide a certain record of events. However the absence of comprehensive family records means
that it is impossible to identify every individual and core fact, so gaps in
our history are inevitable. Where there are gaps, and only where there are
gaps, it is therefore necessary to use common sense, logic, geographical
associations, family clusters and other clues, to make a best guess at the true
circumstances and family relationships. In general, where such an approach has
been necessary, the research has tried to apply the legal test of ‘more likely
than not’, or the ‘balance of probabilities’.
Where the work
is based on records, applying the test of beyond reasonable doubt, the history
is almost certainly correct, the risk lying in the accuracy of the
contemporary evidence itself.
Where, in our
pre 1538 history, it has been necessary to fill the gaps with an application of
logic, then the history is ‘more likely than not’. It could be wrong and
contrary evidence might take us down a different route in the future. But it is
the best analysis that is possible based upon the evidence that has been
reviewed to date.
There are some detailed research notes, which cover
the sources of research including the medieval sources in much more detail, and
this may be of particular interest to family and local historians, particularly
researching Yorkshire families.
Farndale women – some
comments on patrilineal lineage, descendants with other names, and the
importance of women in our history, despite the poor historical records
We should not blame the patrilineal
system of our lineage for this. As a former anthropologist, I know that the
passage of a name through the male line is not the only solution, and many
societies particularly in West Africa have adopted matrilineal systems, and
others have adopted multi-lineal systems such as clan systems. However the system adopted throughout Europe is a
patrilineal one. What is important to a family historian is that there is
structure, and the patrilineal nature of ancestry provides a structure which
allows us to peer deep into our history. Whilst theoretically possible to
explore every diverging family line backwards through time, that would be
impracticable. The unique locative nature of the Farndale name provides a
beacon, which we can follow through time, to find our history. It doesn’t
matter whether we still bear the Farndale name today, or are descended from a
relative however distant, who links into the Farndale chain, this family
history allows us to see far back to our more distant ancestry. It is no more
the history of modern folk bearing the name Farndale than a history of anyone
who is descended from this line of ancestry. The Farndale lineage provides a
tool to look back in time and no more.
In order to
keep this work finite, I’ve recorded a page for every person who was born a
Farndale. The record is equally about female as male folk who were born with
the name. I have not generally recorded those who married into the Farndale
family separately, but have included their stories
where I can. I have sometimes explored maternal ancestry in a few instances.
The patrilineal lineage thus provides a system to record a single family, both
male and female, and to keep the research within some structure and boundaries.
What is to blame for the
evidential focus on the menfolk is the historical record itself. However, the
evidence can only derive from the historical record. It would be completely
wrong for a historian to make up historical facts that were not recorded. So, I
think, what we have to do is to start by recording the
existing historical evidence, to build the story of the family. Inevitably it
is evidence dominated by the male stories. Wherever there is factual evidence
of the lives of women, those are of course brought in to play.
However, what we must then do, is to
apply our own perspective of what must have been. Of course
despite historical biases, women provided a bedrock of families through time.
My granny was at the heart of my own family. My father recalled in the years of
the Second World War, “My mother would come and sit with us as we went to
sleep at night and these moments became highlights of those days. I adored her,
she seemed to understand everything and she never
failed to set my mid at rest whatever my problems. I owe her a great deal
indeed. She ensured that we grew up with balance and understanding of other people.”
I suspect these sentiments reflect the reality of family life stretching far
back in time. So we might be forced to tell stories of
the recorded exploits of the menfolk, but we can add our own perspective to
provide more balance.
As I am still at a research stage, and continue to build the available evidence into
some cohesion, I am conscious that a future task will be to do what I can to
add more balance, to reflect this reality. The current focus will remain for
some time on researching the available historical material, so please bear with
me, but in time, I hope to use wider historical sources to build up a better
perspective about the lives of women, where those are not directly available
from the direct records.
The wider context
Hopefully this
introduction has provided a general idea of the history of our family. The
wider website has over three thousand pages including individual pages for
every Farndale, with historical information about our forebears.
To go from here
you might start by finding yourself, or the particular
ancestor you are interested in by checking the
Farndale Directory, indexed by date of birth. I also suggest
that you explore the eighty eight Family Lines, and look at the Interface Page which shows how they all
link up.
For those with
less time, you can also look at the Headlines Page,
which will take you straight to some of our ancestors most interesting
exploits.
I have started
to build up some underlying pages drawing together information about the geography of the family and particular
locations such as Farndale,
Rievaulx,
Sheriff Hutton, York,
Doncaster,
Pickering,
Kirkleatham,
Skelton,
Moorsholm,
Ampleforth,
Kilton,
Cleveland,
Brotton,
Loftus,
Liverton,
Great Ayton, Stokesley, Lythe,
Guisborough,
Coatham,
Redcar,
Marske, Saltburn by the Sea, Whitby,
Egton,
Boosbeck, Tidkinhow,
Stockton,
Darlington,
Northallerton,
Richmond, Wensleydale,
Middlesbrough, Hartlepool,
Scarborough,
Wakefield,
Bradford,
Leeds,
Newcastle,
Australia, Birregurra in Australia,
Geelong
in Victoria, Melbourne, USA, California,
Las
Vegas, the Hoover Dam, New York, Alberta,
Huxley
in Alberta, Three Hills in Alberta,
Trochu
in Alberta, Newfoundland,
Ontario
and New Zealand. However please note that
these pages are crude and often in note form at this stage, sometimes just
capturing some material which I plane to look at further one day.
I am also
starting to build up separate pages to explain the main occupations and
influences in which our ancestors were involved including agriculture, pioneers,
the armed forces, a table of the Farndales who served in World War 1,
sailors, mining,
and as lawmakers and law breakers.
I will also be
building pages on aspects of Yorkshire’s history that impacted on our family,
including James Cook, Outlaws and the Robin Hood legend, the Royal Navy in
the eighteenth century, East Coast Yorkshire smugglers, the alum trade,
nineteenth century maritime commerce, Yorkshire and the First World War, and
other themes.
I will also
build pages on Yorkshire’s pre-history, eleventh century Yorkshire and there
will be further contextual historical pages including Roman Yorkshire, feudal
Yorkshire, Yorkshire and the Black Death, the Parish
of Doncaster, Elizabethan Yorkshire, Yorkshire in the Civil
War, Victorian Cleveland.
I will also be building
up an underlying social record focused on the local area, to give wider context
to the family story, including education, family self sufficiency,
homes
and big families in small houses, working in service,
religion,
poverty,
recalling the past, women,
ambition,
leisure and entertainment, health,
children.
You may see these
pages evolving over time and gradually building up the wider context.
Meantime work continues on the wider
project.
I am also now
starting to link the family research to the wider historical record and this index provides links
to the wider perspective of English and later British history, which is the
essential context for the genealogical record.