Owston (All Saints)
OWSTON (All Saints), a parish, in the union of Doncaster, Upper division of the wapentake of Osgoldcross, W. riding of York, 5¼ miles (N. by W.) from Doncaster; containing, with the township of Skellow, 420 inhabitants, of whom 283 are in the township of Owston. This parish comprises about 2900 acres, of which 1600 are arable, 900 meadow and pasture, and 350 woodland and plantations; the surface in the eastern portion is usually flat, and in the western gently undulated. A nameless rivulet skirts the parish on the south, and another called the Skel intersects it from north to south. The soil in the west is rich and fertile, resting on a stratum of magnesian limestone, but in the east is of an inferior kind, chiefly clay on a sandstone bed. There are some quarries of limestone for building, and also for repairing the roads, and clay of good quality for making bricks and tiles. The plantations are mostly of elm, ash, and walnut trees in the limestone, and of oak and ash in the sandstone, district. Owston House, the seat of Phillip Davies Cooke, Esq., and for many generations the residence of his ancestors, is a handsome mansion in a park of 200 acres. The village is on the road from Doncaster to Selby; and the turnpike-road from London to Edinburgh bounds the parish on the west. The living is a discharged vicarage, valued in the king's books at £7. 0. 2½.; net income, £160; patron and impropriator, Mr. Cooke. The glebe contains 45 acres, with a house. The church, which is on the north side of the park, contains several monuments to the Cooke family, two of which are by Chantrey; one to Mrs. Cooke, who died in 1818, consists of a figure in an attitude of devotion, and the other, to Bryan Cooke, Esq., who died in 1821, has a figure in alto-relievo, in a sitting posture: a handsome window of stained glass was inserted by Lady Helena Cooke, in 1838. Roman coins have been found at Robin Hood's Well, at the north-western extremity of the parish.
Transcribed from A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858.