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Richmond (St. Mary)

RICHMOND (St. Mary), a borough, market-town, and parish, having separate jurisdiction, and the head of a union, locally in the wapentake of Gilling-West, N. riding of York, 44 miles (N. W.) from York, and 234 (N. N. W.) from London; containing 3992 inhabitants. The town and castle seem to have been founded in the reign of William the Conqueror, by his nephew Alan Rufus, upon whom he bestowed the whole district, with the title of Earl, and who gave the place the name of "Rich Mount," indicating, it is presumed, the value he attached to it. The district had previously belonged to the Saxon Earl Edwin, and the charter, for dispossessing him of his Yorkshire estates, and conferring them on Alan, was granted at the siege of York, in 1069. The castle appears to have been impregnable, from its situation and immense strength, but was suffered to fall into decay at an early period, as when Leland wrote his Itinerary, in the reign of Henry VIII., it was in a state of ruin. It has recently been repaired and restored, under the superintendence of Captain Hampton, who has been guided in this important and very difficult undertaking, by a drawing made about the reign of Henry III., and not long since discovered among the Harleian manuscripts. The town, in Leland's time, still retained its walls; but the three gates called French, Finkel, and Bar gates, had been destroyed. The discovery of a great number of Roman silver coins near the castle, in 1720, led to the conjecture that the town is of Roman origin, but there is no further confirmation of the opinion.

Richmond is situated on the declivity of a hill, at whose foot the river Swale winds in a semicircular course; and the valley to which the stream gives name, and the other parts of the neighbourhood, are celebrated for their romantic scenery. It is a neat town, chiefly built of stone, and the society consists in a great degree of persons of independent property; the beauty of the surrounding district, and the moderate rate at which the necessary articles of consumption can be procured, attracting many of this class. The principal streets contain several excellent houses, and the place is lighted with gas. A handsome stone bridge of three arches, crossing the Swale, was erected in 1789, at the joint expense of the corporation and the North riding. In the market-place, where are some very good shops, is a column, under which a reservoir was constructed for supplying the town with water; but being found inadequate to the purpose, a new reservoir, capable of containing 120,000 gallons, has been constructed by the town-council at the head of the Gallowgate, into which water is conveyed by iron-pipes from a spring at High Coalsgarth, about two miles distant: the expense of bringing the water to the town was about £2000.

From the period of its foundation, during several successive reigns, Richmond appears to have been a place of very considerable trade; but the grant of charters for markets to some neighbouring towns, and other causes, interrupted its prosperity, and until recently the want of means of communication (the Swale, from its rocky bed, not being navigable) was much felt. The Richmond branch of the York and Darlington railway, 9¾ miles long, was opened in September, 1846; it quits the main line a few miles south of Darlington, and, on approaching Richmond, crosses the river Swale, and terminates on the south side of the river and town. The station is connected with the centre of the town by a new road, which crosses the Swale by a handsome Gothic bridge of four arches of 52 feet span. The business is principally in corn and lead, the latter being brought from the mines about fourteen miles westward; there are also quarries of good stone. A large trade in knitted-yarn stockings, and woollen caps for sailors, was formerly carried on; they were manufactured here, and exported to Holland and the Netherlands, but it has nearly ceased. The market is on Saturday, and great quantities of corn are sold at it to the corn factors and millers of the adjacent grazing and mining districts. There are fairs, on the Saturday before Palm-Sunday, granted by Queen Elizabeth, and on the Saturday before the feast of St. Thomas à Becket, and on the feast of the Holy Rood, bestowed by Edward I.; the first and last are for cattle, woollen goods, and various kinds of merchandise, and are numerously attended.

The town, which is a borough by prescription, as well as by various royal grants and charters, was fully incorporated by Queen Elizabeth, in the 19th year of her reign; and by a charter conferred by Charles II. in the 21st of his reign, the government was vested in a mayor, recorder, twelve aldermen, a town-clerk, two chamberlains, and subordinate officers. The present corporation, however, consists of a mayor, four aldermen, and 12 councillors, under the act 5th and 6th of William IV., cap. 76; four justices of the peace have been appointed, and the mayor is a magistrate during his year of office, and for one year after. The limits of the municipal borough are co-extensive with those of the parish. The town first sent members to parliament in the 27th of Elizabeth: the right of election is vested in the £10 householders of the parishes of Richmond and Easby, and the mayor is returning officer. A court of record is held every alternate Tuesday before the recorder, at which actions under £100 may be tried, but causes at issue are generally taken to the quarter-sessions for the borough. A meeting of magistrates occurs every Monday, and a court leet at Easter and Michaelmas. The town-hall is a handsome building, erected by the corporation. The gaol for debtors arrested by warrant from the sheriff of the county, directed to the chief bailiff, belonged to the ancient earls of Richmond, and is now the property of the Earl of Zetland, and rented by the Duke of Leeds as high steward and chief bailiff of the liberty and franchise of Richmond and Richmondshire, in which capacity his grace has peculiar jurisdiction, with power of appointing courts and holding pleas of civil action under 40s. There is also a borough gaol. The powers of the county debt-court of Richmond, established in 1847, extend over the registration-districts of Richmond and Reeth.

The parish comprises by admeasurement 2341 acres, of which 425 are arable, 1618 meadow and pasture, and 298 woodland. The living is a rectory, valued in the king's books at £15. 5. 7½., and in the patronage of the Crown: the tithes have been commuted for £470, and there is an acre and a half of glebe. The church is thought to have been erected about the time of Henry III., but the variety of additions and alterations it has undergone has left little trace of its original architecture; it contains a few handsome monuments and armorial bearings, a beautiful font, and an excellent organ. The chapel of the Holy Trinity, in the centre of the town, belonged to the abbey of St. Mary at York, but was suffered to become ruinous, and no service was performed in it from the year 1712 until 1740, at which period it was repaired by the corporation. The living is a perpetual curacy, with a net income of about £108: the patronage, formerly in the corporation, has been purchased by L. Cooke, Esq., of Richmond. There are places of worship for Baptists and Wesleyans, and a Roman Catholic chapel: in a window of the last is a fine painting of the Crucifixion. The free grammar school, which is in considerable repute, was founded and endowed by the burgesses in the reign of Elizabeth, who granted letters-patent authorising its institution; the produce of the endowment is £300 per annum. A rent-charge of £8 was bequeathed by Dr. Bathurst, in 1659, towards the maintenance of scholars going from the school to the university of Cambridge; and in 1730, Dr. William Allen left his estate at Bures St. Mary, in Suffolk, for founding two scholarships at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, with preference to his next of kin, and afterwards to scholars of Richmond school. The Rev. Matthew Hutchinson's fund, bequeathed in 1704, and now producing about £68 per annum, is appropriated chiefly to the education of boys, and the relief of widows. The poor-law union of Richmond comprises 46 parishes or places, and contains a population of 20,233.

The ruins in and near Richmond possess extreme interest. Of these, the principal is the castle, the site of which comprises nearly six acres; the remains show the great strength of the building when entire, and the square tower, or keep, supposed to have been built at a rather more recent period than the other parts, and which was repaired in 1761 by the Duke of Richmond, is in good preservation. To the north of the town was a house of Grey friars, of which the tower is remaining; it is a beautiful structure in the richest English style, ornamented with buttresses and pinnacles, and was erected but shortly before the Dissolution, at which time the society consisted of a master and fourteen brethren. The establishment itself was founded so early as 1258, by Ralph Fitz-Randal, Lord of Middleham. St. Nicholas, hospital, for sick and infirm people, and pilgrims, a short distance from the town, is of uncertain origin, but is mentioned in the 18th of Henry II.; the present building is supposed to have been erected soon after the dissolution of religious houses, and contains little of the original edifice. Nearly opposite the castle, on the other side of the river Swale, are the ruins of the priory of St. Martin, founded in 1100, which was granted to the abbey of St. Mary, York, and richly endowed by Whyomar, lord of Aske, chief steward to the Earl of Richmond: some fine Norman arches yet remain. Richmond gives the title of Duke to the family of Lennox.


Transcribed from A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858.

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