Great Ayton

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Historical and geographical information

 

 

 

  

Home Page

The Farndale Directory

Farndale Themes

Farndale History

Particular branches of the family tree

Other Information

General Sir Martin Farndale KCB

Links

 

Dates are in red.

Hyperlinks to other pages are in dark blue.

Headlines are in brown.

References and citations are in turquoise.

Context and local history are in purple.

 

This webpage is divided into the following sections:

 

 

The Farndales of Great Ayton

 

Great Ayton is one of the places with a very significant concentration of Farndales who lived there is the seventeenth and eighteenth century and in Victorian times. The Farndales have a close association with the village of Great Ayton. There are four Farndale Lines of Great Ayton. The Great Ayton 1 Line are the descendants of Geogs Farndale (FAR00077)(1624 to 1677) who is himself descended from the Skelton 1 Line. He had a family of eight who were born in Great Ayton between 1650 and 1660.. The Great Ayton 2 Line is a very large line of descendants of Joseph Farndale (FAR00228)(1795 to 1877) who is himself descended from the Kilton 1 Line and from whom sprang a very large family group including many cartwrights, joiners, agricultural labourers, millwright apprentice, shoemaker, dressmakers of Great Ayton and some who moved to other places. The gravestone of Joseph Farndale and some of his immediate descendants can be found still in 2019 in the far corner at the twelfth century All Saints Church at Great Ayton. The Great Ayton 3 Line is another family descended from the Kilton 1 Line, being the descendants of Joseph’s twin, Henry Farndale (FAR00229)(1979 to 1857). The Great Ayton 4 Line is a small family of Mary Farndale (FAR00431) (born 1858) and her son William.

 

Other Farndales associated with Great Ayton include William Farndal (FAR000078); William Farndale (FAR00200); Hannah Farndale (FAR00211); Martin Farndale (FAR00264); Ann Farndale (FAR00273); George Farndale (FAR00271); Elizabeth Farndale (FAR00294); Elizabeth Farndale (FAR00306); John Farndale (FAR00311); Jane Farndale (FAR00322); John Farndale (FAR00328); Mary Ann Farndale (FAR00424); Hannah Farndale (FAR00628); George W Farndale (FAR00678); and Rubina Farndale (FAR00873)

 

 

A picture containing text, photo

Description automatically generated  A group of people posing for a photo

Description automatically generated

 

Great Ayton

 

The Victoria County History – Yorkshire, A History of the County of York North Riding: Volume 2 Parishes: Great Ayton, 1923: By 1923, This parish covers 6,394 acres on the western slopes of the Cleveland Hills and to the south-west of the most notable hill in Cleveland, the coneshaped Roseberry Topping. It included in 1831 the townships of Great Ayton, Little Ayton and Nunthorpe. In 1880 Easby was added. The soil is loamy on a subsoil of Lower Lias; 1,935 acres are under cultivation, and wheat, oats, barley and beans are grown. Woods and plantations occupy 461 acres, and 3,035 acres are laid down to permanent grass. The population is now for the most part agricultural, though there are several quarries and iron ore mines in the parish. At the beginning of the 19th century Great Ayton was a manufacturing village containing three tanyards, a comb and horn manufactory, a common brewery, an oil-mill, a water corn-mill, a tallow chandlery and a brick and tile kiln. The tanneries were still in existence in 1849.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

A screenshot of a map

Description automatically generated  A close up of text on a white background

Description automatically generated

 

Great Ayton Timeline

 

1086

 

There were three 'manors' in Great Ayton at the time of the Domesday Survey. One was extended at 2 carucates and belonged to the king, having previously been held by Hawart. A second manor of 6 carucates, which had been held before the Conquest by Norman, was in 1086 among the lands of the Count of Mortain. It was held of him by Niel Fossard. A further 'manor' of 2 carucates was held under Robert Malet by his man Robert (The Victoria County History – Yorkshire, A History of the County of York North Riding: Volume 2 Parishes: Great Ayton, 1923).

 

1123

 

Robert de Meinell gave the Church of All Saints at Ayton to the Abbot and Convent of Whitby.

 

Niel Fossard's land in Ayton passed ultimately with the rest of his estates to the family of Mauley, who had the overlordship here during the 13th and 14th centuries. Great Broughton, Tunstall and Ayton were held of the Mauleys for one knight's fee by the Meynells of Whorlton and their heirs

 

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

 

The Stutevills probably held lands in Ayton from the early part of the 12th century, but the first member of the family mentioned in connexion with the place is William de Stuteville. He confirmed the grant of the church of Ayton to Whitby Abbey in the reign of Henry II, and died in 1203, when his lands in Ayton, Hemlington and 'Levinton' were worth £10 2s. 3½d

 

(The Victoria County History – Yorkshire, A History of the County of York North Riding: Volume 2 Parishes: Great Ayton, 1923).

 

1281

 

Baldwin de Wake, lord of the manor at Ayton, died.

 

1658

 

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

 

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

 

1666

 

The Parish Register began.

 

1678

 

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

 

1704

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

1728

 

James Cook was born at Marton on 27 October 1728.

 

1764

 

John Coulson, the Lord of the Manor died.

 

The poor houses were erected.

 

1771

 

A picture containing text

Description automatically generated

From Thomas Jeffrey’s Map of 1771, 1 – Airyholme Farm; 2 – Postgate school; 3 – Langbaurgh Hall and Tannery; 4 – Cottages around the High Green; 5 – All Saint’s Church; 6 – Ayton Hall; 7 – Manor House; 8 – Cottage of James Cook’s father; 9 – Ayton House; 10 – Ayton Mill; 11 – Low Mill

1785

 

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

 

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

 

1827

 

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

 

1842

 

The Friends’ School was erected to combine teaching with agriculture.

 

1847

 

A screenshot of a computer

Description automatically generated

Land tenure, 1847 Tithe Map – note Joseph Farndale

 

1857

 

   A screenshot of a computer screen

Description automatically generated

Great Ayton in 1857

 

1859

 

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

 

1862

 

The Wesleyan Methodist Church was erected.

 

1882

 

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

 

1887

 

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

 

1889

 

See the North Yorkshire History Dark nights in Great Ayton, 1889.

 

1894

 

A close up of a map

Description automatically generated

 

An old brick building

Description automatically generated  A picture containing tree, outdoor, text

Description automatically generated

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

 

A vintage photo of an old building

Description automatically generated A black and silver text on a brick building

Description automatically generated

The High Street and the Royal Oak

 

 

1915

 

A picture containing outdoor, tree, grass, building

Description automatically generated

 

A close up of text on a white background

Description automatically generated    

1923

 

A screenshot of a computer

Description automatically generated

West end of Ayton in about 1923

 

2019

 

A large green field with trees in the background

Description automatically generated A car parked in a parking lot in front of a building

Description automatically generated A stream with trees and grass

Description automatically generated A car parked on the side of a road

Description automatically generated

A river with a road and houses

Description automatically generated with medium confidence A white building with a river in the background

Description automatically generated A bench in front of a fence

Description automatically generated A large tree

Description automatically generated

 

Ayton People

 

 

See also James Cook.

 

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

 

Betsy Martin (1781 to 1867) ran a large business at a time when this was a male preserve. When she was in her 60s, she inherited the Cleveland tannery beside the high green, together with offices in Manchester. She tried to let the tannery but eventually decided to run it herself, and employed 8 men and survived a fire caused by a little boy with a Lucifer match.

 

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

 

Thomas Richardson (1771 to 1853) was a wealthy London banker and a partner with George Stephenson in the Darlington works where the early locomotives were made. When he retired he built he built himself Cleveland lodge. In 1841 he bought a large estate fronting the High Green to set up a Quaker boarding school. Two years later along with others he endowed the village with the British school for the children at the village.

 

George Dixon (1812 to 1904) was the first Superintendent of the Friends’ School. He also published books on nature study and campaigned on Quaker issues such as teetotalism. After he retired he spent 18 years in America teaching newly emancipated slaves before he returned to the village where he remained until he died at the age of 92.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

A close up of text on a white background

Description automatically generated

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

 

The Twelfth Century All Saints Church

 

   A black frame with text on it

Description automatically generated  A close up of a piece of paper

Description automatically generated

 

A picture containing tree, grass, outdoor, sky

Description automatically generated A room with a stone wall and a stone arch

Description automatically generated with medium confidence

 

 

Christ Church, Great Ayton

 

 

 

A picture containing sky, outdoor, tree

Description automatically generated A large brick building with green grass

Description automatically generated A picture containing indoor, table, wooden, wall

Description automatically generated A stone building with a steeple

Description automatically generated

   

 

Education in Great Ayton

See Education.

Great Ayton Industry

At least a third of the population of the village were involved in making linen cloth. Many women and children had spinning wheels at home, spinning their flags, which was usually imported from abroad via the Tees. Weaving was done by men, often working in shops in their back gardens. The finished webs of linen cloth were then sold to the local market such as Stokesley. Leather tanning was another important occupation and there were at least two tanneries in eight and. Tanning was a messy industry which involved steeping animal skins in a series of tanning pets, some containing human urine. Some of the leather went to local shoe makers of whom there were several in the village.

See also the Farndales and Mining.

Ironstone

 

Ironstone was an important local industry. There were three ironestone mines in the area at the time of World War 1. Griddale or Ayton Banks was a small concession operated from 1910 to 1921 by Tees Furnace Company (map reference NZ 586110). The mine worked the Peckten seam of ironstone, called after the type of fossil found in the ore. The site was not accessible even for a narrow guage railway, so an overhead cable way was constructed, carried on metal pillars supported by concrete bases, some of which can still be seen.

 

A close up of a map

Description automatically generated

 

Sewage and drainage

 

Follwing the Public Health Act of 1875 a Parochial Sanitary Committee was set up to deal with santiation in a radidly growing village. The minutes show a growing concern for public health with eventually led to the creation of a modern sewage systemfor Ayton.

 

In the areas of Wapping (now Bridge Street and its vicinity) and the newly built California which houses recently arrived whinstone and ironstone miners, sewage facilities were very primitive. Groups of houses perhaps had an earth closet in the backyard which were empted at night via a trap door opening to a back passage. The effluent or night soil was taken in a large metal drum by horse and cart to a tip from where it dried out and was later used as fertiliser for the fields.

 

Cotton

 

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

 

Linen

 

An important industry during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was linen. There is an early reference to a fulling mill in the village in 1353.

 

Tanning

 

Tanning was an important industry in the village until the end of the nineteenth century. Oak bark was easily obtained in the woods around Ayton as a raw material and running water was of course available. Tanning was a capital intensive process and required expensive equipment, so tanneries in a village were unusual. There was also tanning in Guisborough. Ayton tanneries go back to the mid seventeenth century.

 

Alum

 

The Jurassic shales and sandstone of Cliff Ridge and Gribdale contain bands of ironstone, jet and alum, as well as whinstone. The oldest of these industries was alum. This mineral had been used since ancient times for many purposes including medicinal (as cure for haemorrhages, nits and dandruff, and other ailments). Its main uses since the middle gages were to increase the suppleness and durability of leather and in the textile industry as a mordant to make vegetable dyes fast. Alum mining has been a North Yorkshire industry since alum was first discovered in the hills around Guisborough by Sir Thomas Chaloner the younger in the 1590s. From the early seventeenth century until the 1860s it was extensively mined at Guisborough and along the East Cleveland coast. The actual extraction of alum from shale was a long and expensive process and it took an average of 50 tons of shale to produce one ton of alum.

 

In the mid eighteenth century the price of alum was particularly high and reached a peak of £24 per ton in 1765. It therefore became commercially viable to mine in places where this had not been the case previously. Several new mines were therefore opened including one east of Ayton at Ayton Bank, just north of Hunter’s Scar.

 

Jet

 

Another extractive industry was jet mining. Jet mines although numerous were small and individual mines and tended not to acquire names or documentary records. During the nineteenth century hard jet fetched a good price and it was mined extensively in East Cleveland and along the edge of the moors between Roseberry and Kildale. The mines typically took the form of parallel drifts into the side of hills, with headings also driven at right angles to the original drifts at regular intervals, so that the plan of the mine looked like a chequerboard, with square pillars of rock left in place as support.

 

Whinstone

 

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

 

A picture containing text, photo

Description automatically generated A close up of text on a white background

Description automatically generated

 

 

James Cook and Great Ayton

 

James Cook’s Great Ayton years were from 1736 to 1745.

 

James Cook was born in Marton in Cleveland on 27 October 1728. He was born in a crowded and damp cottage with clay walls and a thatched roof. His father was an agricultural labourer who had moved to Cleveland from Scotland in search of work. His mother came from the nearby village of Thornaby. When he was 5, James was sent to Dame Walker, a widow, to learn his alphabet and how to read.

 

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

 

After the Cook family moved to Great Ayton, James was sent to the Postgate school. This was a one storey cottage with just one school room, above which was a garret for the master to live in. At this small village school the local children learnt their letters and their sums. James 's school fees were paid by Thomas Skottowe. James Cook's teacher was called William Rowland. We know this because he was licenced to teach at great eight and by the Archbishop of York. Because William Rowland was also employed to write the annual churchwardens accounts, we know he had a stylish handwriting. James Cook stayed at school until he was 12. This was the only formal schooling that he ever received and even this was probably interrupted because throughout his childhood he would have been expected to help his father with farm work. When he finally left school he went to work with his father full time for a few years before leaving home at the age of 16, when he set out for Staithes.

 

 

A stone wall

Description automatically generated

 

 A statue in front of a building

Description automatically generated    A close up of a tree

Description automatically generated

 

 

Links, texts and books

 

A close up of text on a white background

Description automatically generated   A close up of a sign

Description automatically generated

 

 

Parish Records

 

 

 

A close up of text on a white background

Description automatically generated  A close up of text on a white background

Description automatically generated

 

   A close up of text on a black background

Description automatically generatedA close up of a newspaper

Description automatically generated

 

  A close up of text on a white background

Description automatically generatedA close up of text on a white background

Description automatically generated

 

  A book with text on it

Description automatically generatedA close up of text on a white background

Description automatically generated