It can be seen that the largest tenancies were still held by five families and those of Moor House, Broxhill, Scawton Croft and Antofts were all held by members of the Taylor family who were descendants of Marmaduke Taylor who was a tenant in 1719 — Marmaduke senior was his grandson and the son of Francis, Joseph and Francis were his sons and Marmaduke junior was their cousin. The family were farming 572 acres [44 acres of Scawton Croft were wood] which was the largest acreage ever farmed by one family in Scawton.
Fourteen other tenants had land that varied in size from 203 acres down to 9 and it is pointed out that George Thompson who lived at Hagg Hall worked as a weaver and John Hawkins operated as a cloth bleacher at Cross Green. George Dobson lived at a dwelling on land adjacent to Hill Top Farm to which his 29 acres were eventually incorporated. Thomas Lumley lived at a dwelling in the village on the site of the present-day Midnight Lodge and his 30 acres later became part of Church Farm. The acreages held jointly by several tenants were shared pasture located north of the village and there were four narrow strips that could have been feudal survivals.
It is worth mentioning at this point that in 2004 at the start of a new millennium there are only five working farms in Scawton : Moor House, Pond, Bungdale Head, Manor House and Stocking House though some Scawton land is farmed from Rievaulx, Hambleton and Old Byland. Walter Fenwick of Ashberry farms land that used to be part of Hagg Hall and Scawton Croft, Peter and Richard Teasdale of Abbot Hagg farm land that was also part of Scawton Croft and some that was part of Broxhill. Until recently land that was part of Scawton Park was farmed by the Redhead brothers of Hambleton.
This is the earliest document to record the name, age, occupation and place of birth of every man, woman and child who was living in Scawton on the day the census was taken and when examined in conjunction with the surviving documents from the first half of the 19th century it is also a means of assessing the social status of the various families.
As all the occupations are listed it is also possible to form a picture of the economic life of the village which is not likely to have changed much since the end of the 17th century.
