This article is shared with us by Mr. Haydn Scott of Rievaulx, York, England. His is an historian in the area, and has generously allowed us to share his work with you here. Barry Burley from Sheffield, (descendant of Ralphe(3)) has transcribed the work, and Cynthia (Katzman) Bowlby has made a web page of it.) Thank you *very* much! Our family very much appreciates your sharing this knowledge with us!!
Feb. 2001Domesday Survey of 1086 which stated that ‘Grim had two carucates to be taxed’ which would have been about 240 acres but a bronze hammer heard found at Griff and the partly polished flint found at nearby Stilton House are an indication of human habitation two thousand years earlier. There are no records of any Roman settlement in the immediate neighbourhood though there was a Roman villa between Helmsley and Nawton about three miles from Griff. According to A H Smith the name of the place is of Scandinavian origin and comes from the Old Norse word gryfa whose meaning denoted a deep narrow gully. As there was a strong Danish influence in the area from the end of the 9th century and Grimr was an old Scandinavian personal name it is likely that the Grim who held the land before the Norman Conquest had Danish connections.
In 1086 the land was held by Count Mortain, the half brother of William I whose estates were forfeit to the Crown in 1088 when he conspired to depose William Rufus and later returned to his son William who chose the wrong side in the rebellion against Henry I when his estates were also forfeit to the Crown and passed into the hands of William the Noble who is thought to have been the father of Walter l'Espec who in 1131 granted nine carucates at Blackamoor, near Helmsley (four in the vill of Grif and five in Tilstun) to a group of Cistercian monks who had been introduced to him by Thurstan, the Archbishop of York. It was envisaged by Espec and Thurstan that the Cistercians would be ideal agents to arrest the decline of agriculture in the area that had resulted from William's 'harrying of the North'. The grant of approximately 1,000 acres was a very small part of the 23,000 l'Espec had inherited.
The monks chose the valley of the River Rye as the site for their Abbey and called the place Rievalle or valley of the Rye in old French. Griff and the adjacent vill recorded as Tilstun in the Domesday Survey lay above the valley to the south west of the Abbey and the Cistercians combined the two to create the largest of their Granges. It was common practice for monks to move the local population from their chosen sites and there are differing opinions about whether the remains of foundations close to the present-day farm buildings are those of a pre-Cistercian vill or dwellings that housed lay brothers who worked at Griff.
During the first hundred years of its existence the Cistercian way of life attracted large numbers of followers and the growth can be seen from the estimate of 60 monks 130 lay brothers and 110 servants in 1142/43 compared with that of 25 years later when the figures are assumed to be in the region of 100 monks, 240 lay brothers (conversii) and 260 servants (mercenarii). Griff was the largest of the Abbey Granges and this can be seen from the Lay Subsidies of 1301 calculated on the basis of a fifteenth of the land's annual value where Griff including Tilleston was assessed at £3 1s 4d and the next largest Grange of Bilsdale was assessed at £2 9s 1d.
These assessments were made after the problems created by the scab or Great Murrain, a disease that severely affected the Abbey flocks in 1276 and plunged the Abbey in virtual bankruptcy after which Edward I appointed Edward Kirketon Custodian of the Abbey in 1279. The scab returned in 1280 and in 1291 Thomas, Rievaulx's seventeenth Abbott petitioned the General Chapter at Citeaux for permission to disperse some of the monks to other houses and borrow £250 to meet interest owed to creditors. The agricultural and financial problems were then compounded by those of war as the Scots overran Rievaulx in 1314 and again in 1322. Another blow to the Abbey's finances was struck by the Black Death which decimated the population in 1346 and thirty years later there were only fifteen monks and three lay brothers left at Rievaulx.
From the early 1400s onwards shortages of labour forced the Abbots to begin to depend more on tenant farmers to generate income and the granges at Bilsdale and Raisdale were divided into smaller units which by 1538 were tenanted by 49 farmers. The Abbey surrendered in December 1538 and a survey of its lands made early in the following year named no tenants but the will of Richard Bolbie made in 1552 shows that he was a tenant of the Duke of Rutland who had taken possession of the Abbey lands and as Richard is presumed to have been in his middle years when he died it is possible that he could have been a tenant before the Dissolution. The survey headed Firmae Graungiae de Griffe listed the following land:
Annual
Rental ValueAcres s d Felde garthe Lath-garth Northeside dicti lath-garth Morter-pole felde Coote flate 0 Thabote Hage Yograye Close Tillestones 0 Jodicfelde Hye Ley Fatte pasturae Thysteley-felde Gardielle Stoney Gardielle Gryff Enge Spenser Ynge Barkehouse Ynge Brodeng cum Baxter Lees Horsseclosse Horsseclose Upper Doveholme et le Nether Doveholme Shepecote called Gryscotte with Grene Close Fogge Close Stoke Enge 26 8
Summa £10 11s lOd526 Similar surveys were made of land that had been part of the Manerium and the other Rievaulx Grange of New-lathes from which there is one item that will be referred to in the following paragraph.
Conygarth felde
Some of the land listed in the survey from early in 1539 can be linked to bequests made by Richard Bolbie in his will dated 12 December 1552 as ‘John my son of the Griffe shall have 60s at Griffe and 10s in the Low Medowe beneath Griffe' and sons Rauf and Matthew Bolbie ‘shall have half of the Conynge Garth’. The latter was to become a farm known as Coney Hall Farm that used to be between the farm of High Leys and Stilton.
No other 16th century surveys have survived but Richard Bolbie's will of 1552 included bequests to his sons John, Richard. Rauf and Matthew and fifteen years later John Bolbie's will dated 22 March 1567 bequeathed his farm to his sons Ralph (1561-1601) and James (1583-1608). Ralph had two sons, George born in 1592 and John born in 1597 and it is thought it is his will dated July 1630 which left his best suit of apparel to his brother George, £6 to his son John, £5 to his daughter EIizabeth and £20 to Margaret his Mother. It seems fairly certain that George and his mother Margaret are the Griff tenants named in the estate survey made for the Duke of Buckingham in 1642. Each plot of land was measurad in acres, roods and perches, there being 40 perches to a rood and 4 roods to an acre.
George and Widdow and Ralph Chambers House and Garth, Meadow Close, Green Close Long Rayles and Calves Close Grim Acre and Low Field The Stockings Thistely Leaze The Barke Swarde and the Bank The Ashes High Field Part Ings Meadow next William Yeoward Ings The Middle part where groweth the Alders 0That part next to Lane Total Boulby and Chambers The names Thistely Leaze and Green Close were both survivals from 1539 and The Stockings is the Stokkyns referred to in Richard Bolbie’s will of 1552. Low Field may be the same as Richard Bolbie's Low Medowe and the name of Grim Acre raises an interesting question. Is Grim to be taken as a description of land difficult to cultivate or could it possibly date back to the Grim of pre-Conquest Griff?
George Bowlby and his mother had by far the largest tenancy at Griff but there were another seven tenants who had part of the land that had been a part of Griff Grange. In addition to the farms of Abbot Hagg and Stilton which in 1642 accounted for 219 acres
Thomas Baxter had 68 acres including Morter Close (Morter-pole felde) William Yeoward had 70 acres including Horse Close
William Bentley had 27 acres including Gardells (Gardielle)
Widow Smith had 32 acres known as High Gardells (Stoney Gardielle)
Ralph Watson had 14 acres known as Griff Stockings
William Yeoward had 15 acres known as Ingerdale Close (Yngraye Close)
Michael Allen had 9 acres known as Broad Ing and 8 known as Baxter Leaz (the Brodeng cum Baxter Lees ot 1539)The next surviving record is a list of tenancies made after the Duke of Buckingham became bankrupt and the entire estate was purchased by Sir Charles Duncombe, a London banker, which shows John, Thomas and Ralph Boulby. Ann Chambers, William Huggin, Elizabeth and Richard Yeoward and George Richardson as Griff tenants. Part of Griff had also become a farm named after its first tenant Peter Munday and it continued to be known as Munday Farm until it was merged with Stilton in 1783.
For tenancies during the next 89 years we have to rely on a few Duncombe rent rolls which only recorded the rents being paid but fortunately these did not change and Griff tenancies can be identified for the years 1725, 1730, 1741 and 1772.
Annual rent £ s d 1725 John Boulby 40 7 8 Thomas Boulby 14 8 Jane Munday 0 0 Edward Hornby 12 6 Ralph and Ellen Richardson 2 6 William Belwood 0 0 1730 John Boulby 7 8 Thomas Boulby 14 8 William Belwood 0 0 Ralph and Ellen Richardson 18 2 6 Jane Munday and son William 23 0 0 1741 Thomas Ovington* 40 7 8 Thomas Boulby 29 14 8 Ralph Richardson 18 2 6 Henry Belwood 25 0 0 Edward Hornby 23 12 6 1772 George Boulby 40 0 0 Robert Weightman 32 0 0 Robert Scrafton 18 2 6 Thomas Agar 25 0 0 *Thomas Ovington was the son-in-law of John Boulby. He married John’s daughter Jane in 1725 and took the tenancy some time between 1733 and 1741 when John Boulby died.
A drop in Griff rental income occurred between 1741 and 1772 when 169 acres of former Griff land were transferred to Abbot Hagg Farm which had previously consisted of the 60 acres known as Thabote Hage in 1539 but now became a 229 acre farm.
The Duncombe Field Book of 1783 showed that Griff land formerly known as Munday Farm had been merged with Stilton Farm and that Thomas Agar and John Gray were left sharing 319 acres at Griff. Fourteen years later John Gray was the sole tenant of Griff Farm which had lost a further 88 acres to Abbot Hagg and Stilton but things were about to change. The land that had been worked by tenant farmers for at least 270 years and probably longer was made the estate Home Farm by Charles Duncombe and gained 117 acres from Abbot Hagg and Stilton. The field book of 1822 recorded 992 acres at Griff made up as follows
Griff Home Farm 339 .. Far Moor Park 336 Part of Park Plain 169 Doe Holme 56 Thorney Holme 21 Part of Mill Holme 22 Part of Shrubberies and Stables 9 Close adjoining Griff Lodge 6 Bank below Griff 19 Sward Gill 6 Part of Terrace Bank Wood 9 The size and scope of the Home Farm can be judged from the Population Census of 1851 which recorded the employment of 35 farm labourers compared with 6 employed at the largest of the tenanted farms.
The situation stayed the same until 1862 when Lord Feversham made the 221 acres from Abbot Hagg part of the Home Farm which it remained until 1910 when it reverted to a tenanted farm of 210 acres. Ten years later economic circumstances and death duties caused Griff to change back into a tenanted farm which it still is in the year 2000, some four hundred and ftfty years after the first Bolbie tenancy. No record of Griff could be complete without some mention of the family who lived in the Manor of Rievaulx for at least 270 years.
The family name is shown in the Helmsley parish registers as Bolbie, Bolbye, Bowlby and Boulby and the first record of it at Griff is the will of Richard Bolbie made on 12 December 1552. From this we can see that he and his wife Allison had six children, Jane, John, Richard, Ralph, Bridget and Matthew who are likely to have been born at Griff between 1531 and 1542. John also had six children and his son John had three one of whom was born in 1589 and named after his great grandfather Richard. He married Elizabeth Spence in 1625 and they had seven children, all of whom are thought to have been born at Griff.
It was probably this proliferation of children imposing a limit on the amount of land available to sons that caused the movement of some members of the family away from Rievaulx and Helmsley in the mid-17th century. One son, Bryan, moved to Mansfield Woodhouse in Nottinghamshire from where his son Thomas emigrated to New Jersey. Another son, Richard, appears to have sailed to Nova Scotia and other members of the family moved to Stockton on Tees and some to Sutton on the Forest.
No written records of Griff tenancies have survived for the years between the wills of Richard Bowible (1552) and John Bowlbie (1567) which clearly indicate that they lived and died at Griff and they were followed by other Richards, Johns and Ralphs whose tenancies take us to the early l7th century. George the son of Ralph was born in l592 and his brother John in 1597 and it is likely that he was the John who in his will of 1630 bequeathed his best suit of apparel to his brother George, six pounds to his son John, five to his daughter Elizabeth and twenty to his mother Margaret who it is thought was the Widow Boulby who in 1637 held 306 acres at Griff with her son George and Ralph Chambers. The Griff tenancies then continue until the 147 acres held by George passed to John Gray in 1783 after which George lived at Forge Cottage which was adjacent to what had been Griff land until 1772. He was the last member of the family to live in the Manor of Rievaulx and served on a Manor Court six years before his death at the cottage in 1802.
Although the Bowlbys left Rievaulx the farming tradition was carried on in the area by Joseph Bowlby who was born at Harome, three miles from Helmsley, in 1811 and in 1881 lived in Beadlam which is only four miles away and where he had a 95acre farm. In 1881 a Richard Bowlby who was born at Pockley near Helmsley in 1800 was living with his daughter Mary Sturdy at Castlegate, Kirkbymoorside at the age of 81.
Like their contemporaries and relations by marriage the Richardsons the Bowlbys of the mid-17th century were Dissenters who embarked upon a campaign of non-cooperation with the local Anglican clergy in matters of baptism and marriage. In 1665 the vicar of Helmsley who attempted to officiate at a Bowtby burial was attacked and to use his own words 'I was openly assaulted by a partyof Quakers who both tore my surplice and book of Common Prayer'. In the same year Elizabeth Boulby was prosecuted for practising unlicensed.midwifery, no doubt in an attempt to hide Dissenter births from the clergy and twenty years later Thomas Boulby was reported for 'not coming to Church nor receiving the Sacrament. George Richardson and his wife were similarly reported during a second visitation.
The family remained Quakers until at least the the middle of the 18th century as John Boulby, a grandson of John whose funeral ended in a brawl, In 1733 specified in his will that he was to be buried at the Ampleforth Meeting House. Not that these families of the 17th and 18th centuries practised the later Quaker philosophies of living in peace with their neighbours. In 1670 Judith and Elizabeth Bowiby were each fined 2d at a Manor Court for 'rating hemp in ye river (Rye) which is conceived to be anoysome to cattel and in the same year George Boulby was fined 1 shilling for 'not ringing his swine' and 6d. for his geese trespassing. Nonetheless, Bowbys served as jurors at the Manor Courts for at least 150 years.
A map of the Duncombe Rievaulx Estate made in 1806 enables us to link the land at Griff Grange in 1539 with the fields of 267 years later and locale land that was held by the Bowiby family. Here are the field names and numbers from the field book of 1806.
279 Square Close 377 Whinny Bank 280 Little Low Field 377a Whinny part of Bank 281 Far Low Field 378 Bank Top Close 282 Long Low Field 379 Garth 283 High Pasture 380 Garth 284 High Ashes 381 Stack Garth 285 LowAshes 382 Fold Yard 351 Low Ashes 383 Fold Yard 352 TenAcre 384 House and Garden 353 Well Field 385 Garden 354 Low Pasture 386 Scafton Field 355 Jenny Carr 387 Back Barth 370 Well Holme 388 High Griff Garth 370a Well Holme, woody part 389 Swuare Field 371 Oak Tree Close 390 Belwood Garth 372 Low Stockings 392 Horse Pasture 372a Low Stockings, woody part 397 Boggs 373 High Stockings 398 High Ings 374 Pig Sty Field 398a High lngs, Woody part 375 Beckon Field 399 Low Ings 376 Limekiln Close 399a Low Ings, Woody part
242 High Pasture 271 Ball 242a Banks 272 Hoofington Ing 243 High Seeds 272a Hoofington Ing, boggy part 244 Far Coach Close 273 Harding Close 245 Middle Pasture 273a Old River in Harding Close 241 New Laid Close 274 Thompson Close 247a Garden 274a Old River in Thompson Close 248 Stone Heap Close 275 High Horse Close 249 Cowfold 271 Bank Top Close 250 Orchard 277c Bank Top Close, woody part 251 House and Garth 278 Sugar Hill 252 Close at back of House 391 Stephen Garth 253 Calf Garth 391a Stephen Garth, woody part 259 Batt and Lane to Hill Top 391b Stephen Garth, old quarries 267 Broad Ing 393 Low Horse Close 268 Little Seed Close 394 Belwood Ings 269 Ramper Close 395 Sand Bed 270 Mutton Holme 396 Bowlby Ings The general location of the land that was the original Grange is shown on the separate map and because it is reproduced from the original draw in 1806 and some of the field numbers are indistinct separate maps of Griff and Abbot Hagg have been included.
We can first identify the land that was transferred from Griff to Abbot Hagg between 1741 and 1772 which is shown coloured green and buff on the large map and can be identified by the field numbers on the smaller ones. The obvious connection is field 396 which in 1806 was known as Bolwby Ings but a less obvious link is field 272 known as Hoofington Ing at the same time. Hoofington was a corruption of OvIngton, the name of the man who married John Bowlby's daughter Jane and took his tenancy. Field 394 was listed as Belwocelod Ings named after one of the Belwood famIly who were Griff tenants in the first half of the 18th century. Another part of Griff that was transferred to Abbot Hagg was field 267 known as Broad Ing in 1806 but originally the Brodeng cum Baxter Lees of the 1539 survey.
Two areas can be connected with the will of Richard Bowlby made In 1552.He referred to the Stokkyns and fields 372 and 373 on the 1806 map of Griff Farrn were known as Low and High Stockings. Richard's will also mentioned Conynge Garth and flelds 286,287,288,312, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 319 and 320, the numbers of most of which can be discerned In the top right hand corner of the large map, were all part of Coney House Farm in 1806. The farm ceased to exist in 1820 when Its land was shared between the farms of High Leys and Stilton which were on each side of it.
The fields coloured red on the large map were the part of Griff that became known as Munday Farm in the late 17th century and eventually became part of 6tilton and the fields coloured yellow have an interesting history. In 1806 they were known as Gaydale and were part of Stifton but were 24 acres called GadiII Close when held by John Bentley of Helmsley in 1787. His family held the land from at least 1637 when it was known as High Gardells and 103 years earlier it was listed as part of Griff Grange in 1539 and known as Stoney Gardielle. As the fields are still part of Stilton House Farm in 2000 and known as Gaydale the name dates back at least 460 years.
In 1806 Abbot Hagg field 274 was known as Thompson Close, a name owing its origin to John Thompson who In 1642 had a little cottgge and close near the Forge which was where George Boulby Iived from 1783 until 1802. The description of 27Aa as old river in Thornpson Close was inaccurate as it referred to the remains of a canal made by the monks to carry stone in barges across Griff land and along the bottom of Terrace Bank Wood to the site of the Abbey.
At the beginning of the year 2001 the land that was the Abbey Grange of Griff created by the Cistercians in the 12th century encompasses three farms, two of whose names date back to the 10th century - the vills Tilstun and Grif of the Domesday Survey and a third which was known as Thabote Hage probabty in the mid-12th century and thought to have been where the first Abbot lived before the Abbey was built. Now known as the farms of Abbot Hagg, Griff and Stilton House and covering over 800 acres they represent a legacy first from the AngloScandinavian farmers who worked the 480 acres of the two vills recorded in 1086 followed by the creation of the Abbey Grange which would have originally been farmed by the lay brothers and then by tenants of the Abbots. For the final and probably most significant development we must look to the yeomen farmers of the 17th and 18th centuries, tenants of the Dukes of Rutland and Buckingham and of the Duncombe family among whom the Bowlbys were a continuing and dominant force.
Though the Hawkins family can claim a longer Rievaulx tenancy and were contemporaries of the Bowlbys of the mid-18th century their farming was on a much smaller scale and it is clear to see that the Bolbies, Bowlbys and Boulbys played a major continuing role in the life of Gnff and Rievaulx for at least 250 years. The descendants of Richard Bolbie who died at Griff in 1553 who are now in many different parts of the world can look back over 450 years to his family's part in the changing of a Cistercian Grange to a tenant farming community that consisted of the three major farms of the Rievaulx Estate which made a significant contribution to the economy of the parish.