Yafforth Old Hall finds its history

“The brick building of the Old Hall is an arresting landmark. The house is a scheduled ancient monument but its past remains a mystery.”

The black diamonds in the walls of the Old Hall, Yafforth, are very similar to the designs in the brickwork of Hampden Court Palace in London which was built around 1515 - probably the same time that Yafforth was built

With its black diamond brickwork, the Old Hall is still an arresting landmark on the B6271 heading west out of Northallerton – when we mentioned a year or so ago the icehouse that stands in a field beside it, we were amazed by the response from people who had also noticed it.

And now its history has been discovered.

A thousand or more years of stories have been uncovered by Anne Britton, whose grandfather bought the hall for £14,570 in 1953, and she has recorded them in a new book.

But the Old Hall has been reluctant to give up all of its secrets.

Yafforth church with its ice house - or is it a cold melon store - in front, and the Old Hall on the right. Picture courtesy of google StreetView

It stands beside the River Wiske, just above the floodplain which the river often fills. Experts believe it is on the site of a Saxon manor house, and there is certainly a lot of history in these parts – just behind the hall is Howe Hill, an enigmatic grassy mound that may have Roman roots, may once have had a wooden castle on top of it, may once have had a trench in its summit in which 1,000 soldiers could hide, which may have been the burial place for all the Scots killed at the Battle of the Standard.

The engimatic Howe Hill, on the road from Yafforth to Danby Wiske

Perhaps this may explain why, on damp, misty evenings, a headless horse rider gallops along the side of the Wiske.

Anne has traced the hall’s story back to the knights of the de Bretteville and de la Mare families who came over with William the Conqueror and were rewarded with land in the Yafforth area.

But no one knows exactly when it was built – it seems a hundred years older than its date plate of 1614 suggests.

The 1614 date plaque on the Old Hall was assumed to be when it was completed - but most who examine the hall now think it is 100 years older

And no one knows exactly what size it grew into – it now comprises two big bays but there was once a third, at least. It now has two storeys, but all the signs suggest there was once, on top, a third, at least.

And no one knows whether Oliver Cromwell ever stayed there, although a letter found in the attic in the 1880s suggests he might have done; and no one knows where the secret tunnels beneath it lead to – to Howe Hill, to the nearby church. Or indeed whether they do actually exist.

Right into Victorian times, the Old Hall was owned by inter-related Catholic families who liked to keep the precise details of ownership vague to make life difficult for the Protestant authorities who might wish to confiscate their property on the whims of the monarch.

And so the Old Hall (above) has any number of priestholes squeezed into its 4ft thick walls where Catholics might have tucked themselves out of the way until the danger has passed.

This rebellious thread runs through the owners of the Old Hall. For instance, when Margery Rokeby died there in 1541, she left the brewhouse equipment to her grandson, Christopher. Three years later, he was at the centre of a mass brawl at Gatherley racecourse, near Richmond, which involved at least 300 people, and “the Richmondshire gentry rose to a man in defence of the young heir of Rokeby”.

Christopher then became a spy, taking news from the Catholic-minded northern gentry to Queen Mary holed up in Scotland, hoping to invade. When the English discovered his activity, they forced him to become a double agent, sending them news from inside Mary’s camp. When Mary discovered his treacherous letters, she threw him in jail – perhaps to save him from himself.

So Christopher escaped with his life, unlike another Old Hall owner, Ralph Rymer, who in 1664 was convicted of leading the Topcliffe Bridge plot to seize Northallerton for the anti-royalists. He was hung, drawn and quartered at York, and his head was placed on a spike in Northallerton Market Place to remind the townspeople where their loyalties should lie.

The husband of Anne Walmsley, another owner of the Old Hall, had a more bizarre death. In 1647, he passed away having consumed too many cold melons.

As Europeans had first encountered melons around 1600, he must have been an early adopter of a melon-orientated diet, but this begs the question of how many cold melons constitute a fatal dose, and where, in those pre-refrigeration days, would you store such a consignment – is this why the Old Hall has such an eye-catching icehouse?

After centuries of Catholics, the Old Hall was bought in 1831 by one of the first members of the new religion of industry: Benjamin Rawson had made his name across the north by manufacturing Oil of Vitriol, or sulphuric acid, in factories from Manchester to Bradford, amassing a fortune which enabled him to build up a property empire of desirable homes.

He was an absentee landlord, and Yafforth gained a reputation as “a most capital farmhouse” let to successful local farmers.

During the Second World War, it housed evacuees first from Sunderland and then from London, and during the Cold War, a nuclear warning siren was stationed on one of its massive chimneys. “Every so often, the siren was tested,” writes Anne. “The eerie wailing noise recalled air raid sirens from the Second World War and, as a youngster, I dreaded hearing the noise for real as it would have heralded a nuclear attack.”

Robert Britton was the second generation of Brittons at the Old Hall, but the first with a tractor

When her grandparents, Robert and Sarah Britton from Tunstall, bought the Old Hall in 1953, they became the first owners since the 16th Century to live in the house.

It remains in their family, who have spent the succeeding decades battling the elements to preserve this 500-year-old landmark survivor. Each dig in the garden turns up more evidence of yesteryear – a shard of medieval glass or a piece of old worked stone from the church – as does each job indoors, where lost fireplaces and windows can still be discovered as the Old Hall reluctantly offers up a few more of its secrets.

“The huge mullioned windows, enormous wooden beams and high ceilings speak for themselves,” concludes Anne. “Faded outlines of brick structures and fireplaces whisper of many centuries of change, fashion and religious devotion. Blocked up doorways leading to nowhere suggest a much bigger structure and many more rooms. Oddly placed lintels peppered with peg holes and etched with carpenters’ marks tell of reused crook Timbers and mediaeval origins.

“If only its red brick walls could talk…”

A Most Capital Farmhouse: A history of Old Hall, Yafforth, by Anne Britton is published by York Publishing Services for £9.99. Phone 01904-431213. Email: orders@yps-publishing.co.uk. Website: ypdbooks.com. It is also available from the North Yorkshire County Record Office in Northallerton, the Castle Bookshop in Richmond, and White Rose Books in Thirsk.

• Any stories from Yafforth? Please email chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk

A LARGE tomb chest in Yafforth churchyard is the last resting place of Lieutenant John Moore, the commander of HMS Rinaldo, who died in 1831, aged 46.

The Rinaldo had seen service in the Napoleonic Wars against the French, but when Lt Moore took command in 1824, it was one of seven warships based in Falmouth that had become “packet ships” to run messages to the West Indies and South America.

He made many voyages to and fro to “the Brazils”, New York, the Leeward Islands but especially Jamaica. In April 1826, sailing home from that Caribbean Island, he had to put in at Crooked Island, one of the Bahamas, as he had lost one sailor overboard and another had been killed falling from aloft.

How he came to be buried in landlocked Yafforth, within sight of the rising Wiske, is not known.