Breck House and an Athletic John Brown

A blocked road just north of Helmsley forced us into a long and meandering detour on our way to Bonfield Ghyll. Still, it offered the consolation of fresh glimpses of familiar country.

This is Breck House in upper Bransdale, a solid stone-built Moors farmhouse dating to after 1850. Yet an estate survey from 1782 records a 122-acre farmstead here, then called Birk House and owned by a John Brown. The property then became part of the Duncombe–Feversham estate between 1814 and 1826, when a Robert Norris held the tenancy. By the 1851 census, Norris was still living there with his wife, son, grandson, and a solitary servant¹National Trust Heritage Records Online. Farmhouse, Breck House, Bransdale. Record ID: 31314 / MNA145439. https://heritagerecords.nationaltrust.org.uk/HBSMR/MonRecord.aspx?uid=MNA145439.

Curiously, a John Brown of Bransdale appeared in the sporting news of 26 May 1889, running a four-mile “foot race” against Abraham Wood of Mildrew, Lancashire. Unless the man was still going strong at well over a hundred years of age, this was surely a descendant rather than the same John Brown. For in a place as tightly knit as Bransdale, the name can hardly be coincidence. The race took place at Knavesmire, York, before a large and noisy crowd. Brown finished a hundred yards adrift, the pair covering the first two miles in nine and a half minutes and the full four in twenty minutes and twenty-two seconds. Betting favoured the victor, but it is the possible link with Breck House that makes the story worth the detour—another small but fascinating rabbit hole²“Old Yorkshire”. Yorkshire Gazette – 07 December 1889. Page 10. https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000266/18891207/084/0010.

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  National Trust Heritage Records Online. Farmhouse, Breck House, Bransdale. Record ID: 31314 / MNA145439. https://heritagerecords.nationaltrust.org.uk/HBSMR/MonRecord.aspx?uid=MNA145439
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  “Old Yorkshire”. Yorkshire Gazette – 07 December 1889. Page 10. https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000266/18891207/084/0010