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Silkstone (All Saints)

SILKSTONE (All Saints), a parish, in the wapentake of Staincross, W. riding of York; containing, with the town of Barnsley, the chapelry of Cawthorne, the townships of Dodworth, Hoyland-Swaine, Stainbrough, and Thurgoland, and parts of West Brettonand Cumberworth, 19,820 inhabitants, of whom 1076 are in Silkstone township, 4 miles (S. W.) from Barnsley. This parish comprises 14,530 acres; the soil is generally fertile, and a considerable part of the population is agricultural. The coal here is of the best kind, and extensively wrought; there are also quarries of good buildingstone. For conveying the produce of the mines and bringing up lime, which is much used in tillage, a railroad two miles in length has been constructed from the collieries to the basin of the Barnsley canal. The village is on the western boundary of a picturesque valley watered by a small rivulet; some of the inhabitants are employed in hand-loom weaving, and in the making of nails. The neighbourhood abounds with pleasing scenery, richly embellished with wood, and the surface is boldly undulated. The living is a vicarage, valued in the king's books at £17. 13. 4.; net income £340, with an excellent parsonage-house and fine gardens; patron, the Archbishop of York. The tithes of the commons were commuted for land, under an act of inclosure, in 1799. The church is an ancient structure, partly Norman, and partly in the later English style, with an embattled tower strengthened by panelled buttresses and crowned with pinnacles: it contains a splendid monument to Gen. Sir William Wentworth, Bart., of Bretton Park, commander of the forces in Ireland in the reign of Charles I.; and several other monuments to the Wentworths, of Wentworth Castle and Bretton. At Barnsley, West Bretton, Cawthorne, Cumberworth, Dodworth, Stainbrough, and Thurgoland, are other incumbencies.

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

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