The parish of Oswaldkirk is in the district of Ryedale in the county of North Yorkshire. Named after the church dedicated to the Anglo-Saxon King Oswald, the parish is made up of two townships, Oswaldkirk and Newton Grange. The township of Oswaldkirk is a  village situated on the south facing bank of the Hambleton Hills overlooking the Coxwold-Gilling Gap and beyond to the Howardian Hills.  Newton Grange is situated on higher land to the north east and consists of four farmsteads, Newton Grange, West Newton Grange, Golden Square Farm and Bank Top Farm.

Earthworks provide the earliest evidence of settlements in the area. Early Bronze Age  round barrows and a Bronze Age ring ditch are visible in the north of the parish just south of Dropping Gill Plantation. Later medieval field systems can be seen to the south of Oswaldkirk Hall along with the medieval parish boundary-bank on the Oswaldkirk-Gilling border.

The first recorded reference to Oswaldkirk is in the Domesday Book in which it is referred to as  Oswaldecherca  or Oswaldecherce. The main land tenants are recorded as the Count of Mortain and Berenger de Tosny. Robert, Count of Mortain, was the largest land holder in the country after the king, with holdings in nineteen counties. Berenger de Tosny was the second son of Robert de Tosny (founder of Belvoir Castle) who had holdings in Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and Oxfordshire as well as  in Yorkshire. (Hinde, 1985). Before this date there is no documentary evidence. Some think that a monastery was begun on a site opposite the church in the 9th century and never finished, but there is no documentary evidence for this either. Some have also suggested that the site was used by the monks from Byland before Byland Abbey was completed. The Abbey records are however quite complete and make no mention of Oswaldkirk. Local historians believe that the ruins described by George Frank (1888) in his book 'Ryedale and North Yorkshire Antiquities' are more likely to be from an early manor house than from any form of monastic building. Rushton (1986) reports that 'fragments of a 15th century building have been found there, with Pickering family coats-of-arms from an early hall’. There are still three shields of the Pickering family, lords of the manor from 1316 to 1661, visible on the retaining wall beside the road opposite the church.

Pickering Shield.

Written deeds are available from 1566 at which point the acreage of the manor was approximately 700 acres. This consisted of 100 acres of land (unspecified usage, presumed to be arable as meadows and pasture are listed separately), 50 acres of meadows, 150 acres of pasture, 200 acres of wood and 200 acres of heather. Plus 10 messuages  (‘messuage’ is defined as a dwelling-house and its adjacent land and buildings),  20 cottages, 10 barns, 34 gardens, 10 orchards and an unspecified acreage of common. (Sumner Marriner, undated) 

The Pickering family and their descendants remained owners of the Manor of Oswaldkirk until 1661 when the property was bought by a Mr William Moore. Dissatisfied with the old residence he pulled it down and in the late 17th century he built what is now known as the Malt Shovel Inn and then went on to build the present Hall.

The  Malt Shovel.

The exact date of the Hall is not known but Michael Hanson (1986) of Country Life Magazine writes that his colleague at Country Life, Giles Worsley, puts it at around 1683.

Oswaldkirk Hall.

The 1600s were troubled times, with the Civil War and the associated disruptions of church life. Much of the ancient stained glass in the region was destroyed at the time, probably by Parliamentarian troops involved in the siege of Helmsley castle. There is no record of any direct involvement at Oswaldkirk, but Rector John Denton had become a Presbyterian minister in 1658 at a time when the Anglican Prayerbook was banned. He was a friend of the future Archbishop Tillotson who is said to have preached his first sermon at Oswaldkirk in Denton’s time.  When the ‘New’ 1662 prayerbook was intoduced, Denton refused to conform and was ejected. He went to live at East Newton with his in-laws, the Thorntons. Whilst there he got to know the new 20 year old Rector of Stonegrave, Thomas Comber, who was lodging at East Newton. Comber married a Thornton daughter and as a scholar and theologian eventually convinced ‘Uncle Denton’ to join the Episcopal Anglican church, and he became Rector of Stonegrave on May 27th, 1700. Thomas Comber went on to become Dean of Durham.

In 1768 the York-Oswaldkirk Turnpike Trust was created under an act for amending and widening the road from the city of York to the top of Oswaldkirk Bank. A turnpike had already been created in 1757 between Sproxton and Golden Square which was extended a year later to Oswaldkirk Bank Top. But it was not until 1803 that the Oswaldkirk Turnpike Trust finally set about bringing the Bank up to the standard of the rest. Whilst many turnpikes merely took over and improved existing roads the turnpike road from Helmsley to Oswaldkirk to Gilling was a largely new construction. The road was re-routed from Helmsley so it passed to the west of Sproxton and from Golden Square Farm it kept on the high ground above Newton Grange and West Newton Farm. The Oswaldkirk to Gilling section was a completely new link as earlier routes had been from Gilling to Ampleforth and not directly to Oswaldkirk. (Perry, 1977)

The Manor of Oswaldkirk passed from William Moore to his daughter and then to the Banner family. Upon the marriage of Mary Banner to Richard Oakley in April 1811 the title deeds show that the manor has more than doubled in size since the earlier description of 1566. The manor is described as consisting of 20 messuages, 15 cottages, 35 gardens, 35 orchards and around 1900 acres of land. The land is described as: 800 acres of land, 500 acres of meadows, 500 acres of pasture, 100 acres of wood along with unspecified acreage of common. (Sumner Marriner, undated).

The Rectory was extended in a more gracious style in 1836 by Rector Thomas Comber, for the princely sum of  £1245 10s.

The Rectory.

Until the parish boundaries were tidied up in 1856, a substantial part of Oswaldkirk parish was in detached sections, mainly in what is now Ampleforth parish. These included the fields between Beacon Farm and Studfold Farm and ‘The Royalty’ near Tom Smith’s Cross. Other sections lay between Mill Farm, Ampleforth and Carr Lane and also part of the Ampleforth Abbey lands.

The last lord of the manor to own the whole village was Colonel Musgrave Benson who bought it in 1907 from the Trustees of the Page Henderson family.

Newton Grange is also mentioned in the Domesday Book and at this time was part of the Parish of Sproxton rather than Oswaldkirk. Around 1200 AD Robert, Lord of Sproxton, gave around a 1000 acres at Newton Grange to Rievaulx Abbey who held the land until the dissolution. Medieval field systems are still visible to the north of Newton Grange.

It is not clear at what time Newton Grange Township became part of the parish of Oswaldkirk. Roger Dodsworth the famous antiquarian who compiled the 'Monasticon Anglicanum' tells us in his preface that he was 'born on April 24th, 1585 - at Newton Grange in the parish of Saint Oswald's in Ryedale'. (Yorkshire Archaeological Society Helmsley and Area Group, 1963) In 1639 Sir Henry Cholmley purchased the whole of Newton Grange Township and set about an ambitious building programme. In addition to a manor house, a chapel was built in a nearby field. In 1706 the estate passed into the hands of Sir Charles Duncombe who set about restoring the house to become his main residence, however his successor in 1713 promptly abandoned the plan and Duncombe Park was built instead. The Duncombes continued to own Newton Grange, restoring the chapel in 1765. (Yorkshire Archaeological Society: Helmsley and Area Group, 1963)

Painting of chapel at Newton Grange in the 1800s.

The chapel stopped being used for public worship around 1820 and by 1859 was little more than a barn. In 1879 it was decided to move the chapel. It was then moved stone by stone to its present position beside the Helmsley road in Sproxton. (Goodall and Laver, 1949)

Alison Hampshire and David Goodman

Sproxton Church 2002.