OLD RECTORY FARM [continued]
David York and his wife Eliza were living at the farm in 1901 with their daughters Annie May and Edith Mary and David was employing an apprentice joiner who was also living on the premises. Two other daughters Minnie and Jennie were born at the beginning of the 20th century and Eliza died there in 1906 at the young age of 38.
The national valuation made in 1909 recorded David with 47 acres and Kelly’s Directory of 1913 listed him as joiner and cowkeeper and as his daughters left home he was living at the farm on his own in 1927 and in 1939 when he and his daughter Edith Mary purchased the 10 acres of Old Rectory Farm together with another 19 and ‘all that gait or right to departure of four cattle in common with others having similar rights’. David died in 1949 at the age of 81 and his daughter Edith Mary Bentley died at the Old Rectory in 1965 at the age of 1965 but as her son Herbert and his wife Shirley still live at the dwelling it is possible that the family have lived there for over 165 years and that their connection with the land at the farm has lasted at least 310 years.
THE HARE INN
There is a local tale which claims that this is one of the oldest inns in England and that workers at the forge operated for the Duke of Rutland in Rievaulx visited it for their refreshment but there are no records to support the story and other local evidence suggests it is unlikely. The monks of Rievaulx brewed copious amounts of ale of which there were at last four kinds — convent aill, abbot’s aill, yoman aill and greenhorne and as it is unlikely that the facilities of the abbey brewhouse ceased to be used after the surrender in December 1538 and the Duke of Rutland took possession of the abbey forge in the following year it is unlikely that his workers would wish to travel nearly three miles to Scawton when there was likely to have been an ale house on their doorstep.
The present-day Scawton inn was probably built in the late 18th century and the first identifiable licensee was Joseph Brown who was the tenant of a public house, stable and land in 1822. He married Ann Garbut in 1800 and according to the 1851 census he was born in Scawton in 1776 but there is no record of his baptism in the parish registers though those of his six children were listed between 1804 and 1819. It is possible that he was the son of John Brown who was the tenant of 2 acres of arable and 14 acres of scrog [bracken] in 1812 and he could have been the publican in that year but was not listed as a Scawton tenant in 1790.
The 1851 census listed him as an innkeeper at the age of 75 and in 1866 his daughter Catherine married Thomas York who became the publican after the death of his father-in-law in 1870 and was still at the Hare in 1890 but George Francis Banks was at the inn in 1895 and was living there in 1901 with his wife Mary Ann, daughter Eva Mary and son Ernest. After the death of George Francis in 1912 his widow moved to Rose Cottage, William Henry Richardson moved to the Hare in 1920 and his daughters Doris Jane and Evelyn Mary were born there in 1926 and 1927.
John Webster was the licensee in 1937 and when the Dunelm Trust bought the inn in 1939 John Bentley Armitage was at the sitting tenant, he being the son of John Armitage bailiff in 1881 of Antofts farm where John Bentley was born in 1871. Charles Ronald Billett was the licensee in 1945 and the Dunelm Trust sold the Hare to Percy Easton in 1949 since when there have been a number of owners including Cyril Leake, John Ford, Dave King, Clem Dyson, Dave Young, Ian Symington and Heather Jones and Graham Raine. The owners of the inn in 2004 are Stephen Sproson and his wife Elaine.
