THE EARLY HISTORY OF BARLICK (18)

[Stanley]

THE EARLY HISTORY OF BARLICK (18)

02 January 2002

So, some time shortly after 1147, Alexander, the abbot of the newly founded Cistercian Monastery at Barlick ‘pulled the [existing] church down to its foundations’ in front of the native clerks and parishioners.
Here’s what Hugh, abbot of Kirkstall said in 1205 about what happened next. ‘So, peace restored and litigation laid to rest, the brethren applied themselves to the profit of the monastery in greater quiet yet even so were they troubled by a double discomfort, for freebooters, it being a time of war, would often carry off their effects, and a plague of rains continuing nigh all the year overwhelmed their crops. For six years and more they remained there in unbroken poverty and lack of food and clothing’.
One of the young monks who accompanied Alexander to Barlick in May 1147 was called Serlo. It was his account, recounted in 1207 to Hugh of Kirkstall that Dr Whitaker used for the basis of his version of the story. Here’s what Serlo said, bear in mind he was actually present. ‘The place of our habitation at first was called Bernolfwic (also Barnolfswet) which we called by a changed name, The Mount of St Mary. We remained there for several years suffering many discomforts of cold and hunger partly because of the inclemency of the air and the ceaseless trouble of the rain, partly because, the kingdom being in a turmoil, many a time our possessions were wasted by brigands. The site of our habitation therefore displeased us and the abbey was reduced to a grange.’
There is little doubt that Hugh of Kirkstall’s account is largely based on what Serlo told him so there is nothing to be gained from the fact that both accounts agree. What we can be fairly certain about is that Serlo was giving what, in his lights, was an honest account of what happened in Barlick. However, we should remember that this was a story of the mighty Roman Church being humiliated and failing in its objective to found an abbey in Barlick. I have little doubt that he glosses over what actually did happen in the town during the period 1147 to 1152 when the monks left for a better site at Kirkstall near Leeds.
Let’s look at what happened and use our heads. A bunch of monks arrives in the town throws the inhabitants of Brogden out and starts to build a monastery. At this point I should think we are looking at simple timber structures or requisitioned peasant houses. If there were temporary quarters they would need to be erected quickly before the winter set in. As they settle in and start to lay out fields round the buildings they start to complain about the fact that the noise of the villagers holding their services and festivals at their village church is disturbing their work and meditations. The abbot takes his men out and they start to demolish the church to its foundations, it may well be that they asked Henry de Lacy for a few men at arms to police the action. The villagers hear the commotion, pop down to see what is going on and are compelled to watch their ancient church being demolished. The fact that it is described as ‘being pulled down to its foundations’ tends to suggest that by this time it was a stone building.
We know the villagers and their parson were up in arms about this because they took the trouble to go to court in York and Rome to seek redress. The fact that they lost the case can hardly have improved relations between the Barlickers and the monks. Can we believe that they knuckled under and took no further action against the monks? I doubt it myself, at the very least their would have been passive resistance and perhaps even a bit of light sabotage!
Whatever the truth of the matter, Alexander, whilst on monastery business, chanced upon a group of religious men in a valley near Leeds who followed the rule of The Brethren of Leruth. Their leader, a man called Seleth spoke to Alexander who was quick to note what a good place this was for an abbey. He admonished the brethren and told them that what they needed was a proper rule to follow. He had a word with Henry de Lacy who spoke to William Petvyn the knight who owned the land and it was arranged that the estate would be made over to Alexander to build yet another monastery. This was successful and resulted in Kirkstall Abbey.
Barnoldswick was abandoned but kept by Kirkstall as a grange or outlying estate, farmed by the monks and lay brothers, the profits of which went to the mother house at Kirkstall. This is what Serlo meant when he said that Barlick was 'reduced to a grange'. Actually it’s doubtful whether it was ever farmed to any great extent given the troubles that had gone before but it remained a grange of Kirkstall until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century.
Right, that’s the story from the records. What does it tell us about Barlick? Quite a lot actually, for a start let’s look at the matter of the church that was demolished. We are fairly certain that St Mary’s Mount is the hill to the north of Calf Hall Lane where the path from Townhead across Pickles Hippings intersects with the lane at St Mary’s Well. Assuming I am right about Townhead being the village centre and remembering that the church was near enough to the monastery to disturb the monks this puts its position somewhere near St Mary’s Well. This got me to thinking about other evidence. Pickles Hippings is rather like Forty Steps, it’s a path that doesn’t seem to have a purpose and yet was important enough to have stepping stones across the beck, that is what ‘hippings’ means. What if it was the ancient path that lead to the church? The well would almost certainly be an old sacred site and this could have affected the original position of the church or even possibly a pagan temple before it. Add to this that the written evidence seems to indicate the possibility that it was a stone building, conjecture I know but it all fits.
The records say that not many years afterwards there were churches at both Barnoldswick and Bracewell. Who financed the building of them? Why was Gill Church placed where it is? We can only guess at the answers at present. Suppose the scars left by the monks were so deep that the villagers couldn’t bear to build again on the old site, suppose that the old site was in land being farmed by Kirkstall as a grange. Suppose that what the villagers looked for was another site that had been sacred from antiquity and Gill was such a site. The only thing that I really have a problem with is the old story that the monks were forced to replace the church and built it at Gill out of spite. Churches were sited very carefully and for strong reasons, the explanation is more likely to be based in ancient associations than in spite. However, if you don’t like the theory, work one out for yourself, see if you can come up with a better one.
The whole story also says quite a lot about the Old Barlickers, it took considerable courage to stand up against the Norman establishment and the might of the Roman Church. The Barlickers did resist and in the end won the day as far as the monastery was concerned. I have no doubt that there was bad weather, turmoil in the kingdom and raids from brigands from the north but what Serlo and Hugh don’t mention is anything about the attitudes of the villagers. The fact that they ignore them seems to me to be evidence that they had reason to want to forget them. These intransigent villagers proved to be stronger than the monks, they not only survived but they stayed on the land even though it was a grange of Kirkstall. The fact that they built another church a few years later is another remarkable fact. The Cistercian policies of depopulation failed completely in Barlick.
Let’s take a final snapshot of Barlick in 1200. The settlement at Townhead is looking very much as it is today in terms of layout. Stand at the top of Esp Lane looking down towards Pickles Hipping or Shitten Ginnel in our terms. The very name seems to imply contempt and I have often wondered why it was called that, perhaps it was an indication of how the townspeople felt about what had happened down there. The houses would be lower and built of timber with thatched roofs but we could have little doubt that what we are looking at in 1200 was a settled community that was here to stay, it was strong enough to build a stone church after withstanding the worst that authority could throw at it. I have a very warm feeling about these people and their attitudes, they must have been fairly impressive!
Bracewell and Stock were solid little communities as well, Stock never had a church but Bracewell did. We know from the records that the church was first built at about the same time as Gill but it would be a mistake to assume that there was nothing there before. There could well have been an even older timber church on the site, the truth is that we don’t know. The bottom line is that the bones of modern Barlick were set on the ground and well established by 1200. For the time being we’ll leave it there and come forward to more recent history. (Much later I did more work on the monastery and refined my account but none of the basics changed.)
I want to end this week by thanking all of you who have stayed the course over the last four months. I had to get a handle on the early history in order to understand better the later period. Thanks for bearing with me and I hope you might have learned something as well. The books on Paganism and Early Christianity can go back on the shelf now for a while, I shall get stuck into the transcripts again and do some more on modern Barlick.
One last word of thanks to the paper and the editor. It was a brave thing to do to let me loose with what amounts now to almost 40,000 words of solid history in a newspaper that has to make a profit. I have an idea we might have made history ourselves, how many local papers have printed a history book in instalments? I am full of admiration and am very grateful to have had the chance to do it, I may be a bit soft but I am sure it makes a difference to the town because the more we know about the history the better we will look after what we have got. We have much to be proud of and it’s a wonderful story. Thanks to you all.

02 January 2002