Descriptive Gazetteer Entry for KIRKBY-MOORSIDE

KIRKBY-MOORSIDE, a small town, a township, a parish, and a sub-district in Helmsley district, N. R. Yorkshire. The town stands on the river Dove, in Farndale, 6 miles ENE of Helmsley and 7 ½ WNW of Pickering r. station; is almost surrounded by steep hills, in the centre of a large agricultural tract; is irregularly built, but pleasant; is a seat of petty sessions and a polling place; and has a post office‡ under York, a bankingoffice, three chief inns, a new building called the Tolbooth, a church, four dissenting chapels, a mechanics' institute, an agricultural society, a workhouse, and charities £27. The church is ancient, chiefly decorated English; comprises nave, aisle, and chancel, with massive circular S porch; has a W tower, of 1803, battlemented and pinnacled; and contains a fine brass of Lady Brooke and her eleven children. A weekly market is held on Wednesday; fairs are held on Whit-Wednesday, 18 Sept., and the Wednesday after 5 Nov.; and malting, brewing, rope making, agricultural implement making, Windsor chair making, iron and brass founding, and brick and tile making, are carried on. A Cistertian nunnery stood about a mile from the town; was founded, in the time of Hen' I., by Robert de Stuteville; went, at the dissolution, to the Earl of Westmoreland; fell, in the time of Elizabeth, to the Crown; was given, by James I., to the first Duke of Buckingham; and was sold by the second Duke, the noted George Villiers, to an ancestor of Sir Charles Duncombe, the present owner of the manor. Duke Villiers, after a ruinous course of extravagance and dissipation, died in a house still standing in the market place, next door to the King's Head inn; and the poet Pope, in correctly designating that house as an inn, and otherwise indulging in poetic exaggeration, describes the death in the following well known lines:- " In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half-hung, The floors of plaster and the walls of dung, On once a flock bed, but repaired with straw, With tape-tied curtains, never meant to draw, The George and Garter dangling from that bed Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red, Great Villiers lies-alas ! how changed from him, That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim ! Gallant and gay in Cliveden's proud alcove, The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love: Or just as gay at council, in a ring Of mimic statesmen, and their merry king. No wit to flatter left of all his store ! No fool to laugh at, which he valued more. There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends, And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends." The township comprises 4, 136 acres. Real property, £6, 938. Pop., 1,851. Houses, 411.—The parish contains also the townships of Fadmore, Gillamoor, Farndale-Low-Quarter, and Farndale-High-Quarter. Acres, 21, 681. Real property, £12, 350; of which £60 are in mines. Pop., 2, 659. Houses, 574. The property is not much divided. Coal is worked, and limestone and freestone are quarried. Remains of an ancient castle are in the centre of the Manor vale; and large quantities of fossil bones have been found. The living is a vicarage, united with the chapelries of Gillamoor and Cockan, in the diocese of York. Value, £417.* Patron, the Lord Chancellor.—The sub-district contains also four other parishes and parts of five others; and is a poor law union. Acres, 58, 631. Poor rates in 1863, £1, 674. Pop. in 1851, 5, 623; in 1861, 5, 739. Houses, 1, 196. The workhouse, at the census of 1861, had 40 inmates.


(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))

Linked entities:
Feature Description: "a small town, a township, a parish, and a sub-district"   (ADL Feature Type: "cities")
Administrative units: Kirkby Moorside AP/CP       Kirkby Moorside SubD       Yorkshire AncC
Place: Kirkby Moorside

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