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The History, Area and Objective of Bewerley Parish Council

NIDDERDALE or AN HISTORICAL, TOPOGRAPHICAL and DESCRIPTIVE SKETCH of the VALLEY OF THE NIDD By WILLIAM GRAINGE
nidderdale book frontispiece
Click on the picture to read this 1868 publication on line

or

click here to download a pdf copy.

This pdf copy is a LARGE FILE (7.5 mb) so will take a looooooong time to download. If you are on dial-up connection you may want to skip doing this. The pdf copy starts with the frontispiece on page 10 of the file and is 269 pages in total.

History
Bewerley and Dacre are mentioned together in the Domesday Book as belonging to Erneis de Buren.
" II Manors. In Burelei and Dacre, Gospatric had six carucates* of land to be taxed. There is land to four ploughs. Ernegis has it, and it is waste. Value in King Edward's time fifty shillings. Wood pasture two miles long, and two broad. The whole four miles long, and three broad."
The quantities afterwards given are three carucates in each place. The only other place in the valley [Nidderdale] mentioned is Higrefeld, now Heathfield, in the township of Stonebeck Down. " Lands of Berenger de Todeni. Manor. In Higrefelt,.." more...

The Parish Council was established as a Civil Parish in 1866 and was inaugurated with a chairman from the Yorke family of Bewerley Hall and three councillors.

In 1870-72, John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Bewerley like this:

"BEWERLEY, a township in Ripon parish, W. R. Yorkshire; on the river Nidd, adjacent to Pateley-Bridge, 11 miles NW of Ripley. It includes part of the village of Greenhow-Hill. Acres, 5,872. Real property, £4,973; of which £1,051 are in mines. Pop., 1,297. Houses, 288. The inhabitants are chiefly employed in lead mines. Bewerley House is the seat of the Yorkes."

The 1887 edition of the John Bartholomew Gazetteer of the British Isles gives the acreage of the Parish as 5771 acres (2335 ha) and the population as 1184 - 62% higher than the 2001 census return.

The three views below show
  1. Bewerley Hall in 1836,
  2. CastleSteads, built by the Metcalfe Family in 1861-2
  3. 1806 map of the area
John and George Metcalfe succeeded the Kirby partnership at Glasshouses Mill in 1828. The Metcalfe family ...
"were second only to the Yorkes in the social hierarchy and Castlesteads, built for George junior 1861-62, was second only to Bewerley Hall in its grandeur."

Click on the thumbnail view to load a larger image.

Image: Bewerley Hall 1836 
Image: Castlestead 
Image: Smith's New Map of the United Kingdom (1806) 
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Area
Bewerley Parish Council boundary
Click on the map to view the parish boundary.
The area covered by the Council lies to the South of Glasshouses bridge in the East, follows the river Nidd upstream to Foster Beck and then follows Ashfold Side Beck Westward. The Parish boundary then travels South overland, following the watershed boundary between Nidderdale and Wharfedale, to link to Greenhow and then back to Glasshouses.
An interactive map of the area can be viewed using this link.
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Objective of the Parish Council
The objective of the Parish Council is to represent the interests of its parishioners in local issues such as planning applications, highways and environmental issues.
The Council is also represented on several outside bodies, amongst them, Police Liaison, Britain in Bloom, Swimming Pool, Memorial Hall, Quarry Trust Fund and the Millennium Green. Regular meetings with both Harrogate Borough Council and North Yorkshire County Council are also attended.

In addition to the normal day to day issues the Council is also involved with several other projects such as:

The Council normally meets on the 3rd Monday of every month and the meeting Agenda and venue is posted here and is also placed on the parish notice boards one week in advance of the meeting. Minutes and Agendas can also be be emailed to individual parishioners on request. The Parish Council also produces a quarterly newsletter which is distributed to all households in the parish. Past issues of the Newsletter as well as the current issue are available here.

It is the Council’s goal to seek feedback from its parishioners and to actively involve them as much as possible. We encourage residents with concerns on a specific topic to contact any councillor or if you would simply like more information relating to the workings of the Council.
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frontispiece This extract is taken from

Copies of this book were preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world's books discoverable online. It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain.

This digital copy is available on line by clicking the frontispiece.

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* Carucate
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The carucate was a unit of assessment for tax used in most Danelaw counties of England, and is found for example in Domesday Book. The word derives from the Medieval Latin caruca, meaning plough.

The carucate was based on the area a plough team of eight oxen could till in a single annual season. It was sub-divided into oxgangs, or "bovates", based on the area a single ox might till in the same period, which thus represented one eighth of a carucate; and it was analogous to the hide, a unit of tax assessment used outside the Danelaw counties.

The tax levied on each carucate came to be known as "carucage".

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