Westworth was once a favourite training ground of mine, and I knew it inside out. That plantation of mature conifers across the valley? I first passed through it when the spruce were no more than knee-high. By then, Westworth Farm itself was long gone. It had stood near that solitary tree on the right, its land swallowed either by forestry or by the expanding fields of nearby Round Close Farm.
Back in the early twelfth century, Robert de Brus granted Guisborough Priory a sweeping expanse of moorland, boundaries vague and open to dispute. His son, Adam, later fixed those limits, keeping ‘Westwyth’ as his own private hunting reserve, a so-called forest.
A century on, Peter de Brus, 4th Lord of Skelton, still guarded those rights to ‘Westwith Chace’ jealously. An agreement with the Prior spelled it out in careful terms:
“If the dogs of the Prior cross the boundaries following a beast into the forest of Peter, whether they take the beast or not, they shall be recalled by mouth or horn if possible, and shall be captured without detriment and restored without delay. If the men of the Prior follow the dog’s into Peter’s forest they shall make amends according to the custom of the forest”.
The monks, it seems, had to be kept on a tight leash.
Source: [Ref016]
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