SLINGSBY AND SLINGSBY CASTLE By Arthur St. Clair Brooke, M.A. CONTENTS Introduction The Making of Slingsby, and Slingsby in Domesday Some Lords of Slingsby The Wyvilles The Castle The Church and Rectors Some Changes and Survivals Appendices Chapter 1 Excerpt SLINGSBY is one of a number of villages situated along the southern edge of the vale of Pickering, in the north-riding of Yorkshire and the wapentake of Ryedale. Pickering vale opens on the east towards the sea, and is encircled in other directions by three ranges of hills: (1) The Tabular hills on the north; (2) the Hambleton hills on the west; (3) the Howardian hills on the south. The Tabular hills have their name from their nearly table-like summits. They extend from the coast at Scarboro’ westward to Black Hambleton (1309 feet), a tract of country which Arthur Young speaks of as not having the epithet black given to it for nothing, for it is a continual range of black moors. At this point the high ground curves round to the south, forming the lofty plateau of the Hambleton hills–a name somewhat fancifully derived by Eugene Aram in his projected lexicon from
hemel
and
don,
signifying the heavenly mountain ; and given, he adds, to these hills, not from their elevation, but from their figure to the eye, which is that of half a globe with the convexity upwards. The Howardian hills, the least elevated of the three ranges, extend from Gilling to Malton, and are called after the family of Howard, whose seat is in their neighbourhood. They seem to have been without a name until Marshall in his Rural Economy of Yorkshire, written in 1796, so christened them (vol. i p. 12). A spur of the Hambleton range, called Cauklass Bank, runs into the western portion of the vale of Pickering, dividing it in this part into Ryedale, on the north, called after the river Rye; and Mowbray vale on the south, called after the famous house of Mowbray. The vale of Mowbray, however, is not confined to this part of the vale of Pickering, but extends through the gap, which at Gilling and Coxwold divides the Hambleton from the Howardian hills into the north-eastern portion of the vale of York, as far north as the border of Cleveland; for the Mowbrays had possessions in all this region, their chief seat being at Tresch ( i.e. Thirsk), where they had a castle. —————————————————————————————————————————————— Windham Press is committed to bringing the lost cultural heritage of ages past into the 21st century through high-quality reproductions of original, classic printed works at affordable prices. This book has been carefully crafted to utilize the original images of antique books rather than error-prone OCR text. This also preserves the work of the original typesetters of these classics, unknown craftsmen who laid out the text, often by hand, of each and every page you will read. Their subtle art involving judgment and interaction with the text is in many ways superior and more human than the mechanical methods utilized today, and gave each book a unique, hand-crafted feel in its text that connected the reader organically to the art of bindery and book-making. We think these benefits are worth the occasional imperfection resulting from the age of these books at the time of scanning, and their vintage feel provides a connection to the past that goes beyond the mere words of the text.