Galphay
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Galphay is situated in the Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). It is a lower dales village with around 70 houses, some four miles away from Ripon and close to the larger village of Kirkby Malzeard. The village is situated around a large central green which is used for village events and has a flagstaff, village seat and a number of trees! At the centre of the village is a pub - The Galphay Inn, but the village has no church, shops or other public buildings.
[edit] History of the Village
Usually the first written description of any English village is in the Domesday Book, the great survey of all England made by William the Conqueror in 1085. It does not say very much, because it was for taxing the people: it only says who the place belongs to, how much land, how many ploughs could be used on it, how many are being used, what it was worth in Edward the Confessor’s time, and what it is worth now (in 1085).
In the Liberty of Ripon, we have a list of places belonging to the Archbishop of York in about 1030; of course it is in Anglo-Saxon – Bisco-tun, Monecha-tun, Mercinga-tun and so on. But Galphay village is not in the Liberty of Ripon, and it is not in the Domesday Book. When Domesday was written, Kirkby Malzeard was quite an important place, with a church, and several smaller places belonging to it – Winksley, Laverton, Azerley – with small manor-houses and so much land apiece. But Galphay was not a separate place, though the land it is built on was there, of course: it belonged to Azerley and perhaps had not even a name. For round Kirkby Malzeard was a great forest, stretching up to the heather moors. Laverton is described much later as “in the forest of Kirkby”, and the names of Azerley and Winkslay show that they were forest clearings. What we know now as Galphay was just another part of the forest. All this land in the Domesday Book belonged to Gospatric, the Thane of Edward the Confessor; he owned over 200 manors, and was allowed to keep them after the Norman Conquest. But a few years later he died, and his lands were in the King’s hands; after a few swift changes they were given to Nigel d’Aubigny, the father of the great Roger de Mowbray [1], whose castle stood at Kirkby Malzeard (in the grounds of Mowbray House).
If anyone at all lived at Glaphay in Roger de Mowbray’s time, it would be as a charcoal-burner, or a wood-cutter, or a forester, or perhaps an outlaw. The dictionary of place-names says that Galphay means “the enclosure of the gallows”. It suggests that some very wild people may have taken to the forest in those troubled times, just as we know they did in the Archbishop’s forest of Thornton, not far away.
About 100 years after the Domesday Book, Galphay was given to Fountains Abbey. It is not mentioned in a list of property of 1170, but it comes in one of 1189, so it must have begun, as you know, in a very small way about 40 years before – that is, the early struggles of its heroic founders were within living memory.
Unlike most lay owners of land, the Abbey from the first kept written records, and copied every charter for every gift of land. These Charters, translated into English, made two enormous volumes, and there were 41 about Galphay, though the first 16 of them are missing. These Charters show what happened when a bit of the forest, probably virgin forest, was given to the Abbey.
It was given by, Roger de Mowbray, who was Lord of the Forest, holding a huge area direct from the King. He was an elderly man by then; left fatherless as a small boy, brought up by his mother, the saintly Lady Gundreda, with a great love of the Church, he was one of the chief benefactors to the monasteries of North Yorkshire. He founded Byland Abbey and Newburgh Priory, and gave immense areas of land to Fountains. He fought at the Battle of the Standard, and went on one of the Crusades; but fell out with King Henry II, and his castle of Kirkby Malzeard was destroyed. So was his castle at Thirsk. Roger went on another Crusade, and when he returned he retired to Byland Abbey and became a monk, staying there until he died.
It was probably after his trouble with the King that Roger gave Galphay to Fountains Abbey. He gave 60 acres and a shrubbery near Laverton – the name Galphay is not mentioned – one of his knights, Nicholas de Bellum, and a freeholder, Joscelin do Braithwaite, added a good deal more. For Roger worked his enormous tract of land by letting it off to a number of knights who promised to follow him in battle, and supply so many men at arms if needed; and these knights let off smaller bits to the peasants who actually worked the land.
We see from the charters how very primitive things were in this part of the forest, for the land given by Nicholas do Bellum had no boundaries. He and his Lord, Roger do Mowbray, with “other true men”, simply walked around the piece of land, from the tree that was the boundary between Laverton and Winksley to the Laver in a straight line; then back to the tree, on to Brockeldsyc, (the stream from the Badgers’ Well); up that stream to another stream, Stockbecsyc, and down that to “a certain road going towards Ripon”, until the road took them to the Laver, and they walked up beside the Laver to the place where they started. All the landmarks except the road to Ripon are natural ones. In other charters springs and rivers are mentioned: there was Doddekeld, (the fox’s well), and a hill called Galgheberg (which I think is what is now called Cote Hill); and there was the Redmire and its “syc”, probably Redley near Kexbeck. Later grants – perhaps 20 or 30 years later – mention Stainbrigg (probably Gatebridge) and the Bridge of Laver (Ings Bridge), and Flascebrigg (by Galphay Mill); also bits of land cleared by various people outside the villages – called ridings, assarts, or stubbings; you find Godwin’s assart, Gamel-rydding, Newstubbing, and so on. People were gradually hacking their way into the forest from Winksley and the other villages.
After a while we see that the monks were at work too. First they put up stones as boundary-mark, across the hill where there was no natural boundary. They cleared the land, and grew corn and vegetables on it, and had pasture for 100 sheep. Not content with stones, they built a wall, and made a great ditch to protect their stock. They would have built a little house where a group of lay-brothers could live and look after their farm, which was called a Grange. Part of it had to pay tithes of corn and vegetables to the Canons of Ripon; and the Canons were most upset when the grange was given up to meadow and the sheaves of corn and baskets of vegetables ‘came no more for a time’.
Even now, I think, there was no real village; the lay-brothers were not allowed to live amongst ordinary people, and of course had no families, as they were under the same vows as the monks in the abbey; every so often they came back to the abbey, and took their humble part in the services. It was a humble part, because they were not allowed to learn to read and write, and could only repeat the Lord’s Prayer and the Gloria from memory. Yet sometimes knights returned from the Holy Land gave themselves to the monastery in this way. In Mrs Wilkinson’s book about Fountains is a delightful picture of a very holy and humble lay brother called Sunnulph, who inspired a young knight to join the monastery, and eventually to become the saintly Abbot Ralph Haget, just about this time. When the lay-brothers were old and infirm they retured to the monastery, and were looked after in the Lay-brothers’ Infirmary to the end of their days.
Other folk who were not knights gave small pieces of land – 2 or 3 acres – to build up the grange, and gave up their common-rights; so we do hear the names of some of the villagers, mostly from Winksley: Hudd the son of Orm; Swain the Sage; Humphrey de Winksley (who made Umfray-ridding); Ranulf son of Orm, who was the Pinder of Winksley and married Sigerida the daughter of Serlo de Stainley; and Dolfin son of Godwin de Clutherum and brother of Simon de Langlei (Lumley Moor). Simon do Langlei and his son Henry granted 6 acres in Galghagh – but the monks gave them 6/- for the land, a shilling an acre, and were seized of the land by a staff in Ripon Market Place, Jocelin Veilleker gave 24 acres between Laverton and Braithwaite, which he offered on the altar of Fountains Abbey when he gave himself – that is, became a monk; he had no seal of his own, so the Ripon Chapter sealed the charter for him with their Common Seal (and a very beautiful one, too). Nicholas de Bellun gave himself as a brother of the house (a sort of associate), with a third of his goods “wheresoever I die”, which suggests that he may have gone to the Crusades with his Lord: he wished to be buried at Fountains. His wife Avice was given a pension for the abbey, £5 sterling a year until she died or “perchance changes her life” – that is, become a nun. It seems that some of Nicholas de Bellun’s grants of land did not come to Fountains direct, for among them is a document in which Henna, formerly the wife of Aaron son of Jocey, Jew of York, gives up to Fountains all right to certain lands of Nicholas de Bellun; and neither she nor Isaac her son-in-law and attorney, ‘nor any other Jews or Jewesses are to claim any debt of Nicholas or his ancestors to Manuel son of Leo or the said Leo, or any other Jews or Jewesses’. One would like to know the story behind this!
In 1228 the monks let their land near the Grange of Galphay go back to meadow; so the Abbey allower the Canons of Ripon to collect their tithes of corn and vegetables from their assart of 1½ acres in Selbeshenges, one acre and one rood in Umphrayriddings, and of that assart upon Galgheberg as much as was assarted in the year when the agreement was made.
By 1256, houses were being built on the common – perhaps for the lay-brothers, and they had a sheepfold. There is a mention in 1257 of “that road which begins at Heghenyngthorns and goes to Keschounab, and from Keschounab to the sheepfold”. But in the next 100 years the lay-brothers fadedout – many of the granges of Fountains were sacked and burnt by the Scots in the dreadful times after Bannockburn, and this one may have been sacked too; later, it became a manor of Fountains, a piece of property let to lay folk, paying rent to the Abbey. This was against their rules originally, but by that time rules had begun to slip.
Of course it was not always an advantage to let a grange to lay people in this way; look what happened at Azerley. This one-time grange of Fountains had been let in 1359 to John Webster, Beatrice his wife and their son Thomas; but in 1367 the Abbot found that the said John had (in 8 years!) pulled down the barn (worth 5 marks) and the ox-house (5 marks), and had cut down and sold 40 ash trees (1d each), 20 pear trees and 40 plum trees (1/- each). The Abbot was given possession, and John was to pay him £8.2.0.
Lay tenants would naturally have families and other people working for them, and very likely that is how the village of Galphay came into being. The villagers would go to church and market at Kirkby Malzeard, and go to the two fairs there held every year.
The first person, not a monk, who is described as “of Galphay” was William Malthouse senior of “Gallwhae”, who paid 7d for his toft and 3 acres of ploughland, with 2 acres of meadow at Woodhouse near Wynksley in 1468. But the well-known Ripon family of Steel is said to have been settled at Galphay in 1454.
On January 23rd 1469 there was a shocking affair, when John Wilson, the Abbot’s forester at Galghagh, was attacked while on duty by 5 men, and seriously hurt. The 5 men were Christopher Duffelde of Wynslaw, Will Saunderton of Grantley, Will Askwith, Robert Wardroper of Watlous, and Will Bayn of Kirkby Malzeard – all of whom were summoned to appear at York Minster on the Sunday after the Purification of the B.V.M. (Feb. 2nd) so they did not waste much time over the summons. (Whether the 5 men did appear on the day is another matter.)
In 1653 the Abbot has one Bailiff to look after Galphay and Sleningford, Abraham Combland, who was paid 40/- p.a. At that time the manor of Galphay was valued at £20.
Later in the 16c. a family named Bromley lived at Galphay; and in the 17c. the Lowleys and Brownes had some land there, while the Steeles continued to have property until well into the next century. These families were all buried at Kirkby Malzeard, as some of them directed in their wills.
Some of the land at Galphay belonged to the Prebend of Studley; 6/- p.a. was paid for this in 1609, nobody knew why! It was instead of tithes, by an agreement made with Canon Geoffrey de Larder (Prebendary of Studley) in 1216!
The old connection with the Mowbray family came to an end when they died out in 1490, and the manors of Kirkby Malzeard were sold to the Earl of Derby, and eventually split up. Kirkby Malzeard Market, established on Mondays in 1307, ceased to be held about 1816, but the two fairs survived until the First World War.
In 1849 (June 13th), Mr John Coates of Galphay died, aged 81; he had been a solicitor in Ripon.
In February 1856 the Ripon Millenary Record says there were 9 people in Galphay whose united ages were 760 years, average rather more than 84.
Since that time, the Village has grown to around 70 houses, with a population of about 200. In the last 100 years, a village school was opened - and subsequently closed. The same fate awaited the Methodist Chapel - which is now a private house. A pub still survives (The Gaphay Inn) and a 'Village Institute', which was established after the First World War, is still in existence; housed in wooden structure originally used to house troops in training camp.