MOOR HOUSE FARM [continued]
Francis Taylor was tenant of 203 acres at Moor House in 1839 and twenty seven years earlier Richard Walkington held fields that were held by Taylor in 1839 he may have been tenant of the farm when it had 96 acres and if that was the case it was held by his father William in 1770.
John Wood from Cold Kirby was the tenant of 190 acres at Moor House in 1851 and William Houlston the brother of Andrew Job of Scawton Park became the tenant some time between 1867 and 1870 and the size of the farm had been reduced to 145 acres.
William Leonard Houlston was tenant in 1909 but was at Scawton Park in 1927 and when John William Hebden moved to Moor House in 1937 and was there when its 166 acres were sold to Morrisons. He continued to rent the farm until he bought it and then sold to George Hammond Aykroyd of Priory Farms, Nun Monckton in 1951. The present owners Matt and Ruth Dickson bought it from Aykroyd in 1956.
HILL TOP FARM
The farm was not named until the 20th century and the earliest tenants who can be identified are Richard Goodrick and George Dobson who both had cottages and land on the site in 1839. Richard is thought to have been the son of Thomas who was as a Fairfax tenant in 1719 and may have followed his trade of Chandler on the site.
In 1851 the farm was held by James Goodrick the youngest son of Richard and the eldest son Richard was living at a cottage adjacent to the farm. Thirty years later Thomas Thompson was the tenant at the farm where he lived until his death in 1919 and there is a blank period in the records until 1931 when George Robson and his wife Margaret Ann lived at the farm where their daughter Hilda Mary died in 1937 at the young age of 22 months.
William Cornforth was the tenant of 50 acres when the farm was purchased by Cecil William Aykroyd in 1939 and the Cornforths continued as his tenants until 1945 when Percy Umpleby became the last tenant at Hill Top as after 1965 Cecil Aykroyd left the dwelling unoccupied for 35 years at the end of which time the roof had collapsed and the buildings became derelict.
His nephew and heir sold the site in 2000, plans were passed for a bungalow to be erected but the work came to a halt in October 2003 and at the end of 2004 work has progressed no further.
CHURCH FARM
This name was not recorded before 1927 and existing records make it impossible to identify a tenancy before that of Thomas Almond who was living at the farm with his wife Elizabeth when their daughter Nancy was born in 1838 and lived there until his death in 1877 when his son Thomas took the tenancy and in 1881 he was living at Hill Top with his widowed mother Elizabeth.
In 1901 Ashton Almond son of Thomas had the tenancy which was taken by Harry Anderson some time between 1913 and 1921 and Thomas Butler Dawson was at the farm in 1927 and was the tenant when the farm was purchased by Cecil William Aykroyd in 1939. After Thomas’s death in 1943 his widow Sarah Ellen continued to live there until she died in 1963.
She was the last person to live at the farm and it was then left untenanted and unoccupied for nearly 40 years until the present owners Barry and Vivienne Middlemiss-Wilton bought it in 2000 and had it completely renovated.
