Introduction

Life in Oswaldkirk has reflected most of the changes in the outside world during the 1900s and, being a small community of around 100 families, these changes have probably been more personal than in the country at large.

The Church in the early 1900s

In 1900, St Oswald’s church had just been restored and decorated in the High Anglican style under the care of The Revd Henry Temple, who was also  Chancellor of York Minster. He died in 1904 after  23 years as Rector and was followed by The Revd John Bennett until 1919. The stained glass on the South side was put in in Bennett’s time.

St Oswald's Church before 1885.

St Oswald's Church in the 1920s.

Colonel Benson’s Kingdom

In 1907, all the land and buildings in the village to south of the ridge, except the Church, the Rectory and four small houses along the Terrace, were owned by Col Benson who lived at Oswaldkirk Hall. He also owned most of the land to the south of the village. The land beyond the top of the hill was part of the Feversham Estate, and to the east was Leysthorpe, a separate parish and a ‘lost village’ now linked to Stonegrave. The building and maintenance work was based in the ‘Estate Yard’, opposite the Old Post Office. The Estate Yard later evolved into a saw mill, and then a garage. Since then Rosegarth, Kirkstone Cottage, Hollygarth and Little Paddocks have been built on the site.

The Village School

There was a village school, which had its beginnings in the 18th century as can be seen in charity bequests for educating some poor children of the parish, for repairs to the school and payment of a school master.

The old Village School now Southlands.

By the 20th century the school was situated in what is now Southlands  with the schoolmaster, John Rushton,  living in the end house, now Laurel Cottage.   The school playground and swing were across the Terrace in what is now the upper lawn and garden of Ledbrooke House. Rushton was also the village registrar and his wife Elizabeth played the harmonium in St Oswald’s church for 14 years. The window opposite the Harmonium Chamber was dedicated in her memory in 1909.

In the first few years of the century a school inspector reported that the school was not doing very well and the sanitation was not up to the standards of the day - in the absence of main drainage that must have been quite a problem. In 1908 a dispute between the managers and Col. Benson, who owned the building, led to the school’s closure. The children then walked to Gilling school each day. The path they took led across the fields and through Spring Wood where it joined the Gilling road. This continued until the late 1940s when school buses first appeared.

The Post Office and Shop

Post Office and shop in the 1920s.

In 1910, ‘The Colonel’ completed a village shop and Post Office, which served the village well until the rise of the Car Age in the 1960s, which transformed village life in many ways. The Gatenby family were shopkeepers and postpeople until the 1950s. Before the new Post Office was built, there had been one in Ivy Cottage, next door. An even earlier post office is marked on the 1834 survey - on the Bank, just above what is now School House.

In the 1930s the Gatenbys opened the ‘Bide-a-wee  Cafe’.  This flourished mainly in the summer months and took the form of  a marquee in the present yard. The guy rope fastenings are still in place.

Village Population and Houses

The population of the village was very similar at the beginning of the 19th century to what it is today, but with fewer buildings. Many of the older buildings were multiple houses. Weigelia and Bramleys were both double cottages - one up, one down with a ladder instead of a staircase. East Cottage was three houses - two until the 1950s. The east end of  Manor Farm was a separate house, Well Cottage, with a gate by the present post box. Bank Cottage was two houses until the First World War and  Rigg Cottage was also two houses, with the Dales and Mrs Skilbeck in the east part, and the Beecrofts in the west.

The New Village Hall

Col. Benson’s next venture was building the New Village Hall in 1913. This  was a huge building for a village of this size, with  a maple floor, 44x35ft,  suspended on coil springs to add to the pleasure of the dancers.  One of the popular dances of the 20s was the ‘Palais Glide’, in which every couple swung together to one side of the hall and then to the other. ‘The Colonel’ banned this as it made the floor move violently on its springs. He did not allow country dancing either, which had to be done in the loft of the Malt Shovel barn beside the village hall, with access by ladder.

The Village Hall (south end).

Col. Benson was unmarried, but lived with a formidable housekeeper called Mrs Horner. They used to preside at village dances from a balcony over the main entrance. Working boots were forbidden in case they damaged the floor. There were ‘proper’ toilets, a billiard room, committee rooms and a kitchen.

The Village Blacksmith

The Village Blacksmith,  William  Stabler, lived in what is now East Cottage and worked in what is now the garage and the various sheds which still exist behind it up the hill.

George Skilbeck, the village joiner, was the son of  Dick Skilbeck, who was joiner at Gilling village and  a keen cricketer. George married Amy Rounthwaite, who worked at Grimston Manor, and they moved into the old Oswaldkirk school building. Daughter Mona was born in 1915 and son Dick in 1916.

William’s son Jim took over the business in the early 1900s and moved to Sunnyside, (now St Gregory’s), which had more space and a well. Jim continued to work there until the early 1940s, by which time horses were beginning to be replaced by tractors. The Stablers were succeeded at Sunnyside by the Makins, the joiner, whose wife had a small draper’s shop just inside the front door.

The Great War

George Skilbeck marched away from the Bank Top to join the ‘War to end all wars’ and was killed near Rouen in 1918. Three other village families suffered a similar tragedy.

When George went off  to France, The Colonel moved Mrs Skilbeck and family into Laurel Cottage. This move was so that Amy would not have to negotiate the steps of the School  with two small children and a pram. It also gave her a house with a garden in which she could dispose of the household waste. Earlier  this had to carried up the bank to the garden opposite the police house, now Sunnybank.

Twenty three of the ladies of the village formed a ‘Working Party’ in the village hall to provide warm clothing for the soldiers and sailors ‘at the Front’ . The group was led by Mrs Ellison Horner, as recorded on the plaque in the present village hall.

There was still no mains water supply and although many houses had their own wells, the  Terrace houses drew water from a hand pump on the well down the Gilling Road, now at the entrance to Holly Tree House.

The 1920s

A more normal life resumed after the war. Col. Benson built Cliff House in 1919 and Cragg Cottage in 1922. Both were in the sites of old quarries. The Bungalow was built at about the same time.

Many families kept a cow and a few pigs and some of the old cowsheds can still be seen. The cows were grazed on the relatively flat land at the top of the bank above the village to the south of the Bank Top fields and wall.  The cows were driven down in the evening, for watering and  milking, along the footpath behind The Mount quarry to the pond at the entrance to Birch Bank field.

The roads at the Bank Top did not follow the existing lines, and there was a grass triangle with a signpost in the middle of the junction. Round the signpost was a seat on which, the mostly male, residents used to sit and smoke and put the world to rights. The triangle was only removed in the 1960s in the interests of road safety.

The old Police House on the hill, now Sunnybank, was built in the mid 1800s and had three lock up cells - mainly used for the Drunk & Disorderly.

The Village lock-up.

The Water Supply

Col. Benson’s next major project was to improve the rather basic water supply system which existed before the 1914 -1918 War. The first artesian well was just to the north of the road beyond the Hall. The back wall of the shed can still be seen. The pressure and flow were not great.

The water collected in one of two large underground tanks across the road from which it ran by gravity to the Hall and a few other houses. The other tank was for ‘soft’ or surface water used for washing as the ground water was very hard. Both types of water were pumped by hand to tanks for use on the upper floors of the Hall and Rectory.

Artesian well.

A  new well was drilled in the 1920s near the quarry by Hag Cottage (this was originally two cottages).  The pressure from the well shot a jet of water high into the air.  The village blacksmith, Jim Stabler, was there. This high pressure water was then piped along the village to the end of the Terrace and up to Cliff House and the Bungalow in about 1924.

Harry Maynard lived at the Police House at that time and had to carry his water up from the tap in the road side where the Cliff House drive is now. (this tap was only removed in the 1970s)

Water for Bank Top Farm was taken from the tap at Sunnyside (now St Gregory’s) in a horse drawn tank, or else by yoke and buckets from the roadside tap. The Artesian Well  is still operating and has sufficient pressure to deliver water to the new  Hall Farm on the top of the hill.

The water itself came from a considerable depth and contained a high level of iron sulphides, which gave it a smell of rotten eggs and a red/brown deposit anywhere it was allowed to stand in contact with the air. It was actually very healthy to drink, but visitors did not always appreciate this.

Col. Benson began to build another house up the track beyond ‘The Mount’.  The back wall and water tap can still be seen, but this project was an early victim of planning regulations, and was never completed.

The Electricity Supply

Colonel Benson’s last major contribution to the village was  the Electricity Supply, which was one of the first in the area. He thought that wooden poles were unsightly and installed the steel poles which are still in use. The pole by the church is particularly slim and unobtrusive. Electricity came to most for the winter of 1932. It was generally welcomed, but ‘Nap’ Hugill, who lived in Swiss Cottage West, refused to have it installed as “it would take too many matches to light”.

Up till then, oil lamps and candles had been the only source of light at night and cooking was done on oil. There were some paraffin street lamps and the bottom two feet of one can be seen on the terrace opposite the Old School House. This was last lit in 1939. The top was broken off and sent away to be melted down for the War effort - as were the cast iron fences  from  some of the graves in the churchyard.

Outsiders arrive - the first commuters

One of the last innovations of Col. Benson’s reign was the letting of two houses to total foreigners, from London and Northamptonshire. They came to the area at the beginning of the expansion of Ampleforth College under the leadership of Fr Paul Nevill, and the introduction of laymasters to help with the teaching. After an interview to ensure that they were neither Socialists nor Roman Catholics, Horry and Kath Perry  moved into the old school building, then called  Dormer Cottage and now Southlands. Dick and Dorothy Goodman came directly from their wedding to live in the Bungalow in April 1929.

The End of an Era - The Estate is sold

Cover of Bensons Sale Brochure.

Colonel Benson died on May 18th, 1932 and the medieval world vanished.  One big problem emerged when no heir could be found and the whole village was placed in the hands of Jackson Stops and Staff to sell on behalf of the Inland Revenue. The faithful Mrs Horner, the Colonel’s Housekeeper, vanished from the scene without the expected inheritance. The contents of the Hall were auctioned and many residents acquired souvenirs. Nearly all the houses were sold, often to their occupants, on August 24th, 1933. The farms were sold also.

Some of the Colonel’s more peculiar possessions, like the Village Hall, were not sold in 1933 and these were auctioned in July 1946. This sale also included  Sunnybank, the old police house which still had water from ‘Standpipe nearby’,  meaning 50 yards down the hill at Cliff House. The Village Hall had been rented by the Village Hall Committee, who had sub-let to the military during the war and accumulated enough cash as a charitable trust to buy the hall from the administrators.  The Trust was set up by Major Philip Gatty Smith, who had bought Oswaldkirk Hall, and Richard Goodman and it is still in operation.

The Drains

Until the mid 1930s there was only a partial  sewage system in the village. It included The Hall, Rose Cottage, The Manor House, the Post Office, Ivy Cottage, The Malt Shovel , the Village Hall, The Bungalow, Cliff House and Cragg Cottage. Some other houses had water closets, presumably using  a septic tank, others had earth closets or ash pits. By the end of the 1930s the District Council had extended the sewer along the Terrace and most of the village houses were connected  to it and to the settling ponds in the valley, below Manor Farm, which are still in use.

Another ancient method of waste disposal which was in use until the 1930s is the pig trough. Many households kept a pig in a sty with a chute from the outside leading to a trough on the inside. Edible domestic waste was dropped through for the pigs, who recycled it into bacon.

The 1930s - The Tennis and Cricket Clubs

The playing field that went with the old school became a Tennis Court in the 1920s and the village Tennis Club was a major focus of village activities until the 1950s. The court was moved down to the site of the present Children’s Playground, which had been part of the land attached to the Red House but was given to the village by the Trustees of the Goodings family. Miss Goodings, who lived there at the time, was a keen tennis player, and had the then fashionable style of underarm service.

The new court was levelled with barrow and spade by another local character known as ‘Mac’, who was given to sleeping under hedges. The mowing was done with a small push mower, upgraded a bit in the 1940s when the cricket club closed down. The tennis club flourished until the 1950s, when better courts became available in the area as car transport became more normal.

The field below Pavilion House on the Terrace had been levelled as the Village Cricket ground in Col. Benson’s time, but it was a rather small. There was a wooden pavilion at the west side part of which can still be seen on the remains of the concrete foundations.  The field was bought by Gordon Foster  of Leysthorpe Hall at the sale and he built the two houses, Greycot and Sunnyholme on part of the site. The Cricket Club moved down to a more spacious field beside the Gilling Road, but closed with the dawn of the TV age. The most recent public use of the old Cricket Ground was as the venue for the Silver Jubilee Games in 1977.

The early 1930s were the beginning of what might be termed the ‘professionalising’ of the village. Mainly at first by laymasters employed by ‘The College’ and their families.  Most of the other residents worked on the  village farms, or were employed at the larger houses, or were connected with those who did. The forestry was another major employer, particularly in the 1940s and beyond. Plantations of Norway Spruce covered many of the local hillsides, and they were felled mainly to be used as pit props  in the Yorkshire coalfields.

The first cars began to appear after the First World war, but the Colonel and his housekeeper still toured their estates in a Landau.  The road to York, opened as the Oswaldkirk-York Turnpike in 1768,  had too many sharp corners for the new vehicles and the village street was particularly narrow between the church and the large wall which had retained the Pickering’s  Manor House in the Middle Ages. There were three stone carved coats of Arms in the wall, and a large buttress which further reduced the width of the road. Beside the buttress was a set of mounting steps - quite a common roadside feature (another survives opposite Golden Square Farm). At the east end of the wall was a set of steps going up into what is now the White House lower lawn, and up again to the upper garden, which was an orchard before the house was built in 1937.

Road Improvements

Pickering Lion.

The Gilling road was widened and the bank corner improved in the late 1920s and the village street widened  in 1937/38. The Pickering wall was taken down and rebuilt about ten feet further north, together with a new wall to retain the access track to the buildings above the wall - now the drive for the White House. Sadly the stones of the Pickering Shields and Coats of Arms were damaged in the process, but one is  recorded in the Victoria County History. Several new houses were built in the mid to late 30s, including The White House, Ledbrooke House, and Martins.

View from the Gilling road in the 1920s.

Road widening team on the Gilling road about 1930.

Steam Engine, Threshing Machine and Corn Mill

The yard above the wall by the church was used by Harold Wood, of Abbey House, to store his Steam Traction engine and threshing machine. He also had a corn mill in the one barn and a workshop in another - now demolished. The mill was driven with a belt drive from the traction engine which went through a slit in the wall to the engine which stood in the yard. Getting up the drive was quite an undertaking. The steam engine went up first and the threshing machines were winched up afterwards.

Harold Wood's Traction Engine `Mirabelle'.

The Hag

The village landscape is dominated by ‘the bank’, which is a geological fault line dating from the great Ice Age. As a result we have a line of cliffs and quarries above lower levels of limestone rubble and clay. This mixture is very fertile, the slopes of the hill drain well and are good for trees, the lower levels are heavy soil, with a line of springs along which many of the houses are built. The bank to the west of the village is called ‘The Hag’.  The word means a wooded slope and is related to ‘hedge’  and the Dutch ‘Hague’

The Hag was quite wild until the late 1930s, when it was felled and coppiced. The result in the short term was about three quarters of a mile of scrub and brambles which were very well picked in the war years. The Reliance bus had a special stop for Bramble pickers. In the 1980s the slope was brought under better control and is now a middle aged wood full of wild garlic and bluebells in season.

Bluebells in the Hag.

Until the late 1940s, the slope of the hill came down to the wall at the edge of the road, and stones and other debris tended to fall onto the road. The present terrace was cut from the bank to avoid this problem. The Hag ended quite clearly at the White House rookery and the bank behind the rest of the houses on the Main Street and the Terrace was mostly orchard and gardens. Since that time new trees have become established and the rooks have moved down the village. The whole effect is that the Hag seems to have crept along the bank, which is now much more heavily wooded than in the early part of the century. There was a line of trees along the south edge of the bank top fields, from Thirklewood to above the Rectory.

Hitler’s War

Hitler’s War bought all developments to an abrupt halt and many changes to the village. Nissen huts appeared  in the Manor Farm top field to accommodate the military. The King's Royal Rifles came fresh from the evacuation of Dunkirk and The Grenadier Guards came shortly after them.  The foundations of one of the huts can still be seen above ‘The Steps’ beside the church. The Village Hall was rented out as a recreation hall and sergeant's mess. The Officers used part of Oswaldkirk Hall as their Mess, as guests of Major Gatty Smith and family. Some of them were billeted with village families.

Several young men from the village were called up to active service. Bill Osborne, who lived with his wife and small son in The Old School House, was killed when his ship was sunk in the Adriatic. His next door neighbour, Coz. Watson, fought in the North African desert and returned after the war to teach biology at The College. George Stabler fought in the European battles at the end of the war. Mona Dale’s brother Dick and Alf Hugill also went to war. Many of the men of the village were not called for active service as they were in ‘Reserved’ occupations, such as forestry or farming, or had other skills that were needed for the ‘Home Front’, such as an understanding of chemical warfare and protection against it. The village population was also enlivened by the arrival of ‘Landgirls’ who came to help work on the farms. Most people had some kind of war duties such as First Aid or Air Raid Warden, and the Home Guard was a major activity.

With the ‘Blitz’ at its height many school children came from Middlesbrough as evacuees and went to the local schools. They lived with families in the village. Some enjoyed the country life, but most could not wait to get back to their home towns, which they did as soon as the Battle of Britain had been won, and the German bombers went elsewhere.

We were lucky in not having air raids, but one bomb did hit the chapel at Gilling Castle, with little damage. The night sky to the south was lit up at times when Hull or Leeds was attacked.

The local lanes, such as Stockings Lane, which had been mainly surfaced with crushed limestone up till then, were tarmacadamed to help the military to move around. Tanks exercised in Duncombe Park and arrived in transporters which found the bank corner a bit tricky. The bank corner was also restricted by a stone barricade jutting out from both sides and leaving a small gap which could be closed with a few girders. Each barricade had a small room inside and holes from which to shoot at the enemy. The foundations of the barricades still cause  occasional subsidence holes in the road.

As the fear of invasion subsided, the whole area became a storage and training ground for the invasion of Europe. The road sides were filled with small open ended corrugated iron sheds filled with ammunition of all kinds - land mines, rifle bullets, gas shells, fortunately never used, and hand grenades. Some of the College boys used to collect specimens for dismantling, but this was  discouraged.

Several houses built air raid shelters and at least one ‘Anderson Shelter’ survives at Ledbrooke House as a garden shed. Other more elaborate underground shelters tended to fill up with water and most people decided they would rather just sit under the table in their homes.

Many new airfields were built, including the one at Wombleton. The local quarries did good business supplying stone for the runways, and the Stone Lorries were a frequent, free and reliable addition to the bus service. Later in the war, the main air activity was our bombers collecting together to attack Germany, and the lucky ones returning in the  morning. Wombleton was used mainly for training, but the trainees used to fly over the Bank Top with very little spare height.

An International Development

The first troops to live in the village were fresh from Dunkirk. These were replaced by training units and later by the Free Polish Army. The Poles brightened the social scene considerably and eventually left for D Day.  Many were killed at the battle of the Falaise Gap. The village next became a prisoner of war camp, except that the Italians had surrendered, and were more like our guests waiting to return home. They entered fully into village life, made skis out of floor boards and taught us to use them on Birch Bank. They made toys and introduced us to the flavours of the local edible fungi.

Parrot made by Italian prisoners of war.

 They also did invaluable work in the farms and gardens of the neighbourhood. One, Eugene Coccimiglio, stayed on, looking after the chickens at the Hall, and another married a nubile village maiden and they went to live in Rome. The Italians were followed by the Germans, some of whom obviously thought that the wrong side had won, but many of whom made good friends in the village. One, Herr Wegener, became a strong anglophile, despite what the local bombers had done to his home city of Hamburg. He and his family bought a bungalow in the village in the 1970s.

After Hitler’s War

The late 1940s was not a good period, with no electricity in the afternoons, and shortages of just about everything, including money. The village responded by continuing to grow much of its own food, all kinds of vegetables, and keeping hens for eggs, pigs and geese, much as they had during the war and making much of its own entertainment, with village dances of all sorts. English Country Dancing was particularly popular, with a wind up gramophone for music. Dorothy Goodman was one of the local leaders in this. Tractors were still  a rarity and fields were still hoed by hand.

Mrs Perry, at the White House, set up a small school in the house in this period. It flourished and peaked in the 1950s with about 20 pupils of primary age.

Mrs Perry's School in 1954.

An unexpected feature of the 1950s was the establishment of an Eastern Orthodox community in the Manor House, which had been bought by Ampleforth Abbey to accommodate boys who had escaped from Stalin’s rule in Eastern Europe. The community was led by Vladimir Rodzianko, whose father had been leader of the Dumas under the last Tsar. They converted a large caravan into a chapel, complete with Onion Dome and Icons. Several other Orthodox priests served in the house over the years.

Another international dimension started a little earlier with a group of Polish boys who lived at what became St Gregory's House, which had been the blacksmith’s workshop under the Stablers. The Poles were looked after by Col. and Mrs Dudzinsky who had boys at Ampleforth College at that time.

The village was enriched in the late 1940s by the arrival of a lady called Miss Rugg, who had gone out to China before the First World War, as a missionary, to work with the China Inland Mission. She had been in China during all those troubled years and spent her final years there as a  prisoner of the Japanese. Her story was quite similar to that of Gladys Aylward, recorded in the book ‘The Small Woman’. She came to live at Southlands with a cat called Kim, who she took on her various travels in a string bag. She grew raspberries which she took to York on the bus to sell to some friends who had a fruit shop. The spiritual life of the village was greatly strengthened by her presence, and the Bible Studies which she held.

Petrol Pumps and Garages

The Gatenbys at the Post Office had set up a two pump petrol station in the 1930s, across the road from the ‘Estate Yard’ which was by now a timber business, run by Percy Hugill. The pumps were of the ‘wind by hand’ variety situated on the ground which is now the front of Albro House. This was also the bus stop and a bit of a village meeting place, for instance in the 1945 general election. In  the 1950s, the timber yard was sold to Ike White, who came to the village from Middlesbrough and started a garage with two electric pumps - a distinct advantage. The business grew with the growth in the use and availability of cars, tractors, and  vans of all kinds. There was also a show room and a workshop. Ike married Rene Stockdale and lived with Rene’s aunt, Mrs Stockdale, in Pavilion House. They went on to build what is now Rimbaley on the Gilling road.

The coming of the Motor Car and the end of the Shop and Post Office

Until the 1940s, there were only about three cars in the village, and the shop was an essential part of village life, along with visiting tradesmen such as Thompson from Ampleforth. The Reliance buses provided a good service to York and Helmsley, and the United to Malton and Easingwold. Tal Benson of Ampleforth provided a taxi service. The coming of the car gradually put the village shop out of business. The Post Office continued a little longer and used the Village Hall for a time. The last Postmaster to run the Old Post Office was John Pullan, who retired in 1970. The office then continued to be operated in private houses, first by Sylvia Stephenson at the Bank Top and finally by the Deans, in South View, who were unable to find a successor when they left the village in 1977.

The Post War Baby Boom

In 1953, the village lost its resident Rector and became linked to Ampleforth. The Rectory was sold to one of the many prolific Roman Catholic families of that period, mainly associated with the staff of Ampleforth College. There were at one time forty children between four families.

New Family at The Hall

The Heathcote-Amorys came to live in the Hall in 1957 and Roddy contributed greatly to village life, as churchwarden and chairman of the Village Meeting and in many other ways. He added the eagles to the yard gate. His brother was Chancellor of the Exchequer for a time, and his son David is in Parliament at the time of writing.

The Feversham Estate

The Feversham Estate sold the farms in the Newton Grange township in the 1940s and 1950s, mainly to other landlords at first, but the farms gradually came into the ownership of the occupying tenants.

New Building

Several new houses were built in the early 50s: Holly Tree House, Thirklewood, and The Steps. These were all built to the maximum permitted size limit in the post-war period, but have been extended later. Four new council houses were also built next to  Broad Farm, followed by four more at the top of the bank and a detached Police House. This was the beginning of the major evolution of the village from a largely agricultural community to a mixed and increasingly professional population. This process was given a major boost by the local entrepreneurial building fraternity. The first was Jack Bradley of Gilling, who was a major feature of the national building scene. He bought the field belonging to Manor Farm below the Manor House, but unfortunately went out of business before the development could be progressed. The land was then bought by Norman Lilley who had just set up Sketchmead Homes, which evolved into part of Persimmon Homes today. He built the ‘New Estate’, which increased the number of houses in the village by nearly 25%. Surprisingly the population remained at about 180 adults, as it had been in the 1834 Census, but increased prosperity required more living space. Cheaper private travel made commuting more common. Whereas only a few years earlier the ownership of a car was seen as a definition of a prosperous middle class family, it was now almost essential to all.

Jubilee games 1977 on the old cricket ground.

The 1977 Silver Jubilee

The village held a great sports day for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, on the old cricket ground followed by a supper with music from local talent in the Village Hall.

The New ‘New’ Village Hall

During the 1980s, it was apparent that the old ‘New Village Hall’ was becoming a liability and was no longer suitable for the type of functions that now took place. The main hall was so high that it was almost impossible to keep warm and people now expected a more comfortable place to meet. The Committee, headed by Mary Ogram, decided to sell most of the site for building and build a totally new hall which would be smaller and  accommodate village events. After a good deal of negotiation with the Charity Commission, the County and District Councils and the Yorkshire Rural Communities Council, sufficient funds were obtained and the present hall opened in 1988. The stone from the front of the old hall was used for the new houses and the front of the new New Hall, and some of the old lime wood flooring was used for   the main room - but without the old springs.

New Village Playground

One significant development in the 1990s was the conversion of the derelict tennis court below the Red House into a Children’s Playground with much local fund-raising and generous grants. The original village school playground had been converted to a tennis court in the 1920s, so a circle was completed.

The Parish Meeting and Churches Together

Amongst other changes in the 1980s and 90s has been the emergence of the Parish Meeting as a well attended forum for taking decisions on local matters, and the increasing use of local lay people to conduct the worship in St Oswald’s church. Our Rector now also covers Ampleforth, Gilling and Stonegrave and local leadership became essential if the church bell is to be rung  and God worshipped  at St Oswald’s each week. This system was set up by the Revd David Newton and the rest of the York Diocese  came to discover that such a development is not only necessary, but desirable. A further development has been the growing co-operation between the Christian traditions in the village. This began in the 1960s with a joint Good Friday procession through the village and has grown with a packed house for the Christmas Eve carols, led by a largely professional orchestra. Joint study groups are held during Lent, and so far, two ‘Songs of Praise’ events in the Village Hall which have been supported by around a quarter of the village.

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In conclusion, Oswaldkirk has remained a small community of around 180-200 people since at least the early 1800s. Many other villages  have been transformed by expansion in the 20th century. Oswaldkirk has escaped this particular change, although the standard of housing has been improved substantially. A village of our size has a special quality in which we can all know each other. If anything needs doing, everyone who wishes can be involved. Colonel Benson and Major Gatty Smith provided leadership in the first half of the century, followed by Brigadier Heathcote-Amory. Today we have an active Parish Meeting which fills this role.