Westerdale: From Templars to Ironmasters

A rare chance the other night to climb Top End, the nose of the rigg that leads up to Young Ralph’s Cross. Usually I pass this way in a rush—driving, or sometimes cycling—keen not to lose momentum on the steep bank.

Below me lies Westerdale, so named for its place as the westernmost dale in the valley of the River Esk. It has the air of a village that time has slowed, its single street lined with some thirty houses, most from the eighteenth or early nineteenth century. Once it had its own shop and Post Office, a school, a public house — the Duncombe Arms, or was that just a rebranding of the Crown Inn to appease a new landowner? But I digress, it also had Wesleyan Chapel, a youth hostel, and even a village green. The green has long since been absorbed into private gardens.

Westerdale’s quiet surface hides a rich history. Its most notable residents were the Knights Templar who, in the early thirteenth century, were granted the manor and held it for over a hundred years establishing a preceptory. After a short return to the Crown, it passed to the Knights Hospitallers in the mid-fourteenth century.

At the foot of Top End stands Bagdale House, once known as Cole Close House. Beyond it lie fields that the Victorian Ordnance Survey marked with the tantalising label “Ancient British Settlement.” Visitors were encouraged to seek out the “Refholes” or roof holes — a scatter of circular pits¹Murray, John. “Handbook for travellers in Yorkshire” 1867. London.. These were no settlement after all, but most likely the remains of a medieval bloomery, where iron was smelted, along with ironstone workings. The site may even be the meadow mentioned in a late twelfth-century grant to Baysdale Abbey. Could the naughty nuns have been medieval iron magnates?

Slag turned up by the plough confirms ironworking took place here²NYMNPA HER Record No: 7014/3530/12591. Medieval bloomery and ironstone workings surviving as earthworks.. Such work required charcoal in abundance, and the old name Cole Close House hints strongly at its production.

Main Source

<Wilson, Carol M. “Westerdale: the origins and development of a medieval settlement”. 2013

• 1
  Murray, John. “Handbook for travellers in Yorkshire” 1867. London.
• 2
  NYMNPA HER Record No: 7014/3530/12591. Medieval bloomery and ironstone workings surviving as earthworks.