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The earliest dated historical remains in Masongill came from a burial at North End pot which was dated to the Late Iron Age (about 250 BC.) Being close to the marginal land which was only enclosed in 1812 and also to the unusual arrangements for Ireby Fell (where the commons has had controlled grazing for centuries,) means that the land has been left untouched and unimproved there, with many remains for the discerning eye to discover.

Instead of turning right as Fell Lane leaves the village continue straight ahead and on to the gate leading on to Ireby Fell at the "Coffin Hole". This deep pool was used for dipping sheep until the construction of dipping pens on the farms led to its discontinuance. There are two more washfolds within half a mile, one on the Mill race half-way up Fell Lane and one half-way down the beck from Marble Steps pot. Sheep-dipping seems to have been a popular pastime. The map below uses a GPS survey undertaken in 2004.



From the Coffin Hole follow the beck upstream until a second beck (from Marble Steps,) joins it on the right. Climb up the spur of land at the junction and keep on until you cross a stream. On the far side of this stream there is an area of activity which suggests strongly that there was a click mill here at some time in the early medieval period. (A click mill is a water-driven small mill with a horizontal water wheel.) There is evidence of water control here with a ponded area for water diverted from the stream and a discharge channel cut into the bank below the site of the mill. There may also be the remains for a small building but this would have been a very crude affair simply large enough to shelter a small quantity of corn.

The other features on the map are there on the ground to be found but choose the right time of year! The fell is now at its lowest stocking level for many years and the remains which were clear enough a dozen years ago are getting overgrown and more difficult to see. February is a good time. The circular remains have not been dated yet but are typical of any time in the Neolithic,Bronze and Iron Ages (from 4000 BC to 400 AD.) The conventional view was that Iron Age buildings were circular but there is clear evidence that rectangular buildings were also constructed at that time. There are a number of rectangular remains to be found near to North End pot one of which has been Carbon 14 dated to 150 BC (200 years before the Romans came to do good to us,) and some of the rectangular remains on Ireby Fell could therefore be contemporary. The survey indicates rectilinear remains in the reeds and this has an associated enclosure and cells which suggest that this could be a site from either the Dark Ages (400 AD - 600 AD) or the Early Medieval (600 AD - 800 AD.)

Both the ditch and bank features are very easy to trace on the ground. The name Stirragap near the lefthand ditch and bank is very significant as this records the point where access to and from an early settlement to the fell was made. The left hand ditch has been probed to a depth of 75cm and can be traced for a considerable distance towards Leck. It could be that the ditch and bank is a remnant from a medieval deerpark or it could be a territorial boundary.The likelihood of the second explanation being correct is increased by the presence of the righthand ditch and bank which clearly is a territorial boundary heading as it does up the fell. This feature seems to be later than the feature marked as a ring cairn ( dated at 135 BC from C14 dating,) as the ditch turns away from this cairn to go up the fell. There is a medieval document which dates from 1307 relating to Burton Chase which includes this area. The late Mary Higham attempted to trace out the boundary of the chase. If she was correct (and the early part of the boundary perambulation is not crystal clear,) then that boundary must have crossed the two ditches perhaps dating the ditches to 130 BC to 1307 AD. The features are curious as they do not relate in any way to the parish or manorial boundaries and yet must have entailed a fair amount of labour to construct. It is entirely possible that they are territorial markers from a period before 130 BC.

Near to the Coffin Hole the sites of Throstle Hall and Bradey Beck can still be made out in Mr Lawson's fields (n.b. not Open Access land.) Throstle Hall was marked as in ruins at the time of the survey for the first edition Ordnance Survey map (1841 - 1842) and little is known about it. However Bradey Beck was occupied by a blacksmith called Garnett prior to the construction, in the early 1750's, of the Kendal-Keighley turnpike road (the present A65, more or less.) After the construction of the toll road Garnett had moved his smithy to Bentham. The location of a smithy between Ireby and Masongill suggests that the blacksmith depended on passing trade.The presence of Stirragap, Throstle Hall and Bradey Beck close together is very strong evidence that the old road from Kirkby Lonsdale passed through Cowan Bridge and Ireby across these fields. Further evidence is the peculiar straight section of Fell Lane between two sharp bends the line of which is continued by a holloway leading from above Masongill Hall to Fell Side and on to Thornton Hall. Further there is a disused lane which connects Masongill Hall to that holloway and the holloway also marks the southern boundary of the land which was enclosed in 1812 from the open fell. Just to clinch the matter the lime kiln at the sharp turn north of the straight section only makes sense IF there was a road nearby on which to bring fuel to the kiln and to transport lime away (the size of the kiln was much bigger than the “sod” kilns built for an individual farm's use.)

Another old track (which is classified as Early Medieval on the National Monuments Register,) is the Illiwell which must have been the original route from Masongill to Burton via Biber Mill (which is known to have existed in the 1500's and given the importance of mills to manors probably much earlier than that. There was a manor of Masongill and although the manor is an administrative area rather than a building it is likely that the manor was administered from Masongill Hall. There are remains close to the farm which suggest the medieval settlement was there with substantial wall footings and a stackyard next to medieval rigg and furrow land. It is likely therefore that the leat which was cut to bring a reliable source of water down to Biber Mill was a manorial improvement undertaken to bring in a steady income as all the inhabitants of the manor would be forced to pay for their corn to be ground at the manorial mill and only the manorial mill. It has been suggested that the leat gives rise to the name Masongill. This is not so. Some say it was Maisinger Gill that is 'Valley of the Great Tits,' but the veneration of small birds seems pretty unlikely. The Victoria County History of Lancashire oddly enough provides details about the holders of Masongill manor.

John, son and heir of Sir John de Tatham in 1290 gave all his land of Masongill in Thornton to John de Thornton and Berletta his wife.
In 1404 the manor of Masongill was released to Sir Thomas Tunstall, William his son and Anne wife of William.
Sir Richard Tunstall, a Lancastrian, attainted in 1461 ( but later pardoned and restored,) granted in that year his manor of Masongill with the advowson of Thornton in Lonsdale to his son William who had married Anne. .
It therefore appears that Masongill was represented at one of the bloodiest battles ever fought on English soil - the Battle of Towton where thirty three thousand men were slaughtered. Sir Richard seems to have been as agile a character as “Little Finger” in Game of Thrones. For details of his slippery career use this link or search for Sir Richard Tunstall Towton 1461 online.

The next mention of Masongill appears in the documents of Durham Cathedral.

Petition by Robert Gybson of Masongill, Thornton in Lonsdale parish, who came to Durham cathedral and, after the bell had been tolled, asked for sanctuary, for the reason that, on 2 July 1512, because of an assault made upon him by one John Whittyngton, as he claimed, he struck the said John lethally in the neck with a daggar, at a place called Mortstane within Thornton parish, from which blow John died that day
Witnesses: Thomas Haughton and Alan Gibson' of York and Durham diocease
Eve of James the Apostle, namely 24 July 1512.


Almost forty years later in 1538 Thomas Cromwell introduced the registration of births, deaths and marriages in every parish. There was a suspicion that it was just a wheeze to introduce a stealth tax and there was much dragging of feet. Records for Thornton Parish exist from 1576 and were thought to be good enough to be included in the work of the Cambridge group of academics constructing their best estimates of historical population sizes and birth, death and marriage rates. Even so there is a great deal of frustration in store for those seeking to piece together the histories of local families. Not only did records come to a virtual stop during the Civil War and Commonwealth but the strong representation of dissenters and catholics in this area means that the registers have many gaps and dead ends (sorry about the pun.) The registers show that there was a noticeable turnover in the surnames within the village over the whole period with only occasional families living for as long as three generations in Masongill.

Much greater detail is to be found in the Tithe Award and Map of 1842 and in the censuses from 1841 onwards. The map on the next page is based on the Tithe Map and its associated schedule which lists which families occupied the properties.



Of the dozen families noted on the map only ONE, the Wallers, was still present in Masongill in 1901 and that family died out in the mid-twentieth century. The Wallers were originally Procters who in order to inherit the estate had to change their name - as Emmeline Garnett once remarked "The aristocratic and gentry families only continue in name by bastardy and name changes." The censuses show a consistent turnover of family names from one census to the next with roughly HALF the village moving out within 10 years (and half coming in, of course.) With all the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution there was enormous movement of population away from rural areas. There was a change too in the lot of the tenant farmers which improved from the middle of the nineteenth century and which led to many small farms being absorbed into more viable enterprises. Before this many small farmers had to be like Robert Taylforth and be a "Farmer and cordwainer (leather worker, usually shoes or harness)" in order to do more than subsist.

Masongill has a strong connection to the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Conan Doyle studied medicine at Edinburgh and somewhat earlier Bryan Charles Waller had not only studied medicine at Edinburgh, too, but had lodged with the Doyle family whilst doing so. Doyle senior was an alcoholic who was shipped off to an asylum and by 1891 Mrs Doyle is living at Masongill Cottage whilst Bryan Charles Waller is living, unmarried, at Masongill House. It is known that Conan Doyle stayed at Masongill Cottage with his mother and also that his second wife to be, Jean Leckie, stayed at Parr Bank although their relationship was purely platonic. However there always was a whiff of scandal about Doctor Waller and Mrs Doyle with rumours that when the Doctor was married Mrs Waller refused to attend dinner if Mrs Doyle was invited. The Doctor was remembered by the late Geoff Brown of Westhouse as an obnoxious man. Geoff had a brother who was frail and suffered from heart problems. Geoff remembered Dr Waller coming to Geoff's house and shouting at the brother for being at home and not at the school for Westhouse boys (who were clothed in flannel shirts provided by the medical tyrant.) The ruins of the cottage of the Taylforths (8 on the map above) were still known as "The Doctor's Surgery" in the 1970's. One final story about the Doctor was reported in the Dalesman in the 1960's. At his funeral an onlooker was heard to say "There'll be no more 'Yes, sir' 'No, sir' where tha'rt goin'."

Over the past forty or fifty years there has been considerable rebuilding and conversions and in common with many other beautiful villages in the Yorkshire Dales National Park the village has moved away from being a working village to being a dormitory and retirement village. History suggests that change of this order was ever thus.The medieval site around Masongill Hall was cleared at some time before the great rebuilding of the sixteenth century and the lower orders moved downhill to the present site. The Hall itself lost its significance in the eighteenth century when the gentry moved to the site of Masongill House and the Hall became simply the estate farm. The new village would have originally been timbered houses arranged in a triangle with the green at the centre with entries at each vertex. At least one house, Dale House, shows clear signs of the old timber structure (the tell-tale is the presence of large pad-stones in the base where the timber verticals were placed clear of the ground,) with the cruck-beam timbers being re-used. Reused cruck beams are typically misidentified as ships beams but again the tell-tale sign is the simple housing joint at an angle to the beam which strengthened the 'A' shape of the crucks. Rebuilding and raising roof heights took place in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and this was also the time when many of the barns were built. A clear example is provided by Low Lane House which ironically has a datestone of 1619 reincorporated into the wall. The initials on this datestone may be either RJ or more likely RT since Robert Tatham of Masongill was buried in 1628. I wish I could see the additions to this history to be made in 100 years time. Doubtless another old fogey will be recording changes and ancient gossip.


Masongill in the 60's



Masongill in 2015 from the same spot



From L to R, Brian(visitor,) Irene and Dan, Nick(visitor,) in the front garden of Holden Farm 1960's



Hatters Cottage, Dale House, Low Lane House in 1960's



Dale House, Low Lane House 2015



View from Old Cow lane. Some things have changed in this photo too.


Page last updated Thursday 21st August 2015