It is unfortunate that some of the parish registers were destroyed by fire at the end of the 19th century. According to Henry mark Thompson who was born in 1885 the Rector attempted to copy some of the damaged parts but many were destroyed. The first entry in the registers is dated 1632, fifty seven years after baptisms were being recorded in Rievaulx and Helmsley and records of only 64 Scawton baptisms and 12 marriages have survived between then and 1700. As there are the same gaps in the Bishops’ Transcripts we are left with incomplete records for the period 1575 - 1700 and to see which families were living in Scawton we have to turn to the list of jurors at a manor court in 1588 and the hearth tax of 1673. The starred names appear in the parish registers.
As no marriages were recorded in the Scawton parish registers between the years 1693 and 1721 and no baptisms between 1691 and 1720 it is assumed that some entries for the intervening years were destroyed and the registers only list 78 baptisms for the next 80 years but by combining the surviving register entries with other records it has been possible to create brief histories of families who lived in Scawton for at least 100 years and some who were there much longer
THOMPSON
This name appeared in Scawton records for 367 years though the incomplete registers make it impossible to be certain whether all the records refer to members of the same family but it is possible that they were all descendants of John Thompson who was a juror in 1588 and may have been related to John Thompson who lived at Forge Cottage in Rievaulx in 1642.
The John Thompson who had a dwelling in Scawton with two hearths in 1673 is thought to have been the Fairfax tenant of 140 acres in 1694, 97 of which were known as The Lund and the 1912 Ordnance Survey showed Lund Slack west of Bungdale Head Farm where many later generations of Thompsons were to live.
