Evolution of settlement

The starting point for investigating settlement growth was the creation of a geocoded database of the first recorded dates of individual settlement names so that

chronological settlement information could be reflected on a map using ArcGIS. The major source of place name dating for the West Riding is Professor A.H. Smith’s The Place-Names of the West Riding of Yorkshire published in the early 1960s.²⁸⁰ This monumental work claims to include all major and minor names recorded on the 6 inch

280 A.H. Smith, The place-names of the West Riding of Yorkshire, 8 vols., English Place-Name Society Vols. 30-37, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1961-1963).

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maps of 1901-22.²⁸¹ Unfortunately the arrangement by civil parish rather than by earlier townships causes confusion and inconsistencies because of the changes in administrative units over time.²⁸² More importantly, Moorhouse has noted that the sources used by Smith were not exhaustively mined and that it is therefore dangerous to assume that the earliest recorded date given by Smith is in fact the earliest recorded reference.²⁸³

However there were also more immediate practical issues. Smith does not distinguish between settlement and other place names. This is complicated by the fact that names used for settlements are also often used for physical or other features. For example, Crumber Hill is a hill in Wadsworth township but the name of a farm in Erringden township. Names were therefore validated as settlements on the first edition Ordnance Survey 6 inch map of 1848 before being accepted. 676 names were initially extracted from Smith, of which 92 could not be identified on the 1848 OS map or were areas, tracks, hills etc. As Faull points out however, the fact that it was a settlement in 1848 does not necessarily mean that the occurrence of the name in an earlier period also signifies a settlement, particularly if it has a topographic meaning.²⁸⁴ In the absence of other evidence to the contrary, the assumption has been made that settlement names do have this continuity but it is recognised that this is a potential weakness in the data set.

281 A.H. Smith, The place-names of the West Riding of Yorkshire, Part 7: Introduction, bibliography, river-names, analyses, English Place-Name Society Vol. 36, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1962), p.114.

282 Ibid; S.A. Moorhouse, 'Settlements' in M.L. Faull and S.A. Moorhouse (eds.), West Yorkshire: an archaeological survey to A.D. 1500, (Wakefield, West Yorkshire Metropolitan County Council, 1981), pp.585-613 at p.588.

283 Moorhouse, 'Settlements', p.588.

284 M.L. Faull, 'The use of place-names in reconstructing the historic landscape; illustrated by names from Adel township', Landscape History, 1, (1979), pp.34-43 at p.40.

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Many settlement names in the Upper Calder Valley have a common name element with one or more other discrete settlements. Termed ‘linked farmsteads’ by Roberts, these are typically differentiated by height, such as Upper (or Higher) and Lower: for example Higher Smithy and Lower Smithy; Upper Clough Foot and Lower Clough Foot.²⁸⁵ A less frequent differentiator is distance, as in Near Shaw Croft and Far Shaw Croft, or size as in Great Stubb and Little Stubb. The data presented by Smith rarely distinguishes between these so it is impossible to know which site was used first. As such sites are nearly always less than half a kilometre apart, and often as little as 100 metres apart, the grid reference entered for the name was an approximate midpoint between the two sites. As the distances are so small, representation on maps of the whole study area using a midpoint location did not affect the settlement pattern in any significant way. Occasionally one farmstead site is clearly larger than the others, such as Upper Beestonhirst in Soyland surrounded by the smaller sites of Lower, Middle and Far Beestonhirst. Where this is the case the location of the settlement site is taken as being the largest site rather than using a midpoint.

Generally it has been assumed that Smith’s location of place names as being within the specified civil parishes is correct. However it is worth noting that a number of place names occur within more than one parish and that there is room for error. Some corrections were made to Smith’s data where there was a high degree of certainty. For example the unusual name of Mutter Hole, which was listed by Smith as ‘lost’ in Hebden Bridge parish (meaning that it was not recorded on the first edition OS map), was found in Todmorden parish. Tymeley Bent, also listed as lost, can be identified on the Myers map of 1835 in Sowerby. The Murgatshaw listed by Smith can only be

285 Roberts, The making of the English village, pp.140-1; Roberts and Wrathmell, Region and place, p.4.

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identified fully on Myers map where the names are given as Higher and Lower Murgatshaw whereas on the OS map they appear as Shaw and Lower Murgatshaw.

Occasionally the same name appears in two locations within the same parish. The larger settlement is taken as being the one identified by Smith.

Where earlier dates of first mention were identified from other sources these were used instead of Smith’s date. For example, Greave House in Midgley is first mentioned in 1717 according to Smith but Sutcliffe has traced it as far back as

1654.²⁸⁶ One instance has also been found where Smith used the earlier date of a close in one township as evidence for a farm name in another township, albeit in the same civil parish.²⁸⁷ Such occurrences were few as consistent checking of other sources for dates of first mention has not been undertaken as part of this research. The amount of time required would be substantial and any additional data would be very unlikely to significantly affect the overall chronological settlement patterns. Even so, such sources provided thirteen earlier dates of settlements and fifteen new settlements additional to those in Smith. Two additional sources were examined in detail however.

Research by Stephen Moorhouse, published as part of West Yorkshire: an Archaeological Survey to A.D. 1500 in 1981, was presented as a settlement

distribution map similar to those presented in this thesis. Map 25 in that work purports to show the number of settlement locations in 1400, a much denser picture than

obtained by using the data in The Place-Names of the West Riding of Yorkshire.²⁸⁸

286 T. Sutcliffe, 'A tour in Midgley', Transactions of the Halifax Antiquarian Society, (1928), pp.113-57 at p.151.

287 Lane farm in Stansfield is listed as being first mentioned in 1595 when in fact the reference given by Smith relates to Layne closes in Langfield: A.H. Smith, The place-names of the West Riding of

Yorkshire, Part 3: Morley wapentake, English Place-Name Society Vol. 32, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1961), p.183.

288 Faull and Moorhouse (eds.), West Yorkshire: an archaeological survey, Vol.4, Map 25.

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Identification of these settlement locations on the map using ArcGIS, and examination of the original record cards stored at the West Yorkshire Archaeology Advisory Service, shows that the map potentially adds another 100 locations to the 72 dated locations in Place-Names of the West Riding that are dated to 1400 or earlier. These were identified by Moorhouse from the Wakefield Court Rolls to 1330 and from land grant transactions of the period.²⁸⁹ The vast majority of these identifications are based on matching personal names to place names.²⁹⁰ For example, a reference in the 1286 Rolls to Alice del Croft being unlawfully ejected from her land in Mankinholes is interpreted as being an identification of Croft as a settlement in 1286. The name is first recorded by Smith in 1595.

Although there is no guarantee that the record card database was still complete, its condition suggested that it was unlikely that it had been touched since the original work was done. However, the dataset is massively inconsistent with both the

published map and with Smith’s data. The inconsistencies are detailed in Appendix 3.

To give a flavour of some of the issues, eleven of the pre-1400 names identified by Smith were not included on the map. In contrast, 32 of the pre-1400 names in Smith had no card but were on the map while seventeen cards for locations on the map only gave a post-1400 date. According to both the published text and notes in the card set, locations that only had six digit grid references noted on the card were unable to be precisely located and were not located on the map.²⁹¹ Yet in fact eighteen of these locations are included on the map. Errors of identification were also found. Robertus Lawe is listed in the 1379 Poll Tax under Langfield. Moorhouse matches this name with Law Hill, a farm on Erringden Moor. Unfortunately Law Hill is a

289 Moorhouse, 'Settlements', pp.602-3.

290 See ibid., pp.589-93 for the issues he identified in using such names.

291 Ibid., pp.602-3.

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century farm built as part of a private enclosure by Christopher Rawson after 1835.²⁹² It is not shown on Myers map of that date. Hartley Royd in Stansfield is ascribed a date of 1324 based on a Roger de Harteleirode appearing in the Wakefield court rolls.

However, Roger appears under the graveship of Sowerby which does not include Stansfield. The reference is almost certainly to Hartley Royd in Warley which is in the graveship.

These uncertainties of interpretation led to the decision not to add much of this data to that obtained from Smith. However 30 locations were given earlier dates of first being recorded, two new locations were added and 27 agreed with the date supplied by Smith. These additions indicate the potential frailties of dating settlement by place name as dates of first being recorded are moved to a date often centuries earlier, thus increasing the density of settlement earlier than otherwise indicated.

A complementary settlement dating source is provided by the physical evidence of buildings with dates inscribed on them. A geocoded database of these has been created by David Cant of the Yorkshire Vernacular Buildings Study Group who kindly

provided it as source material. Although dated buildings largely only survive for the seventeenth century onwards, eighteen of these datestones provided earlier dates than those recorded in Smith. Perhaps more surprisingly, another 40 new settlements were added to Smith’s list.

The combined evidence of these three principal sources, Smith, Moorhouse and Cant, resulted in a geocoded spreadsheet database of 644 settlement names together with

292 West Yorkshire Archive Service (Calderdale) SU 407.

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their first recorded date of existence.²⁹³ The database enabled the extent and nature of the settlement pattern to be mapped for particular time periods. This evidence was used to determine the accuracy of the assertion by Roberts and Wrathmell that the settlement morphology found in the nineteenth century maps summarises the evolution of rural settlement by concealing ‘latent images of far earlier patterns’.²⁹⁴