Place:Pontefract, West Riding of Yorkshire, England

Watchers
NamePontefract
Alt namesBroken Bridgesource: Wikipedia
TypeBorough (municipal), Suburb
Coordinates53.7°N 1.3°W
Located inWest Riding of Yorkshire, England     ( - 1974)
Also located inWest Yorkshire, England     (1974 - )
Yorkshire, England    
See alsoWakefield (metropolitan borough), West Yorkshire, Englandmetropolitan borough of which it has been a part since 1974
source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
source: Family History Library Catalog


the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Pontefract is a historic market town in the Metropolitan Borough of Wakefield in West Yorkshire, England, east of Wakefield and south of Castleford. Historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, it is one of the towns in the City of Wakefield District and had a population of 30,881 at the 2011 Census. Pontefract's motto is , Latin for "After the death of the father, support the son", a reference to the town's Royalist sympathies in the English Civil War.

Contents

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Neolithic

In 2007 a suspected extension of Ferrybridge Henge – a Neolithic henge – was discovered near Pontefract during a survey in preparation for the construction of a row of houses. Once the survey was complete, the construction continued.

Roman

The modern town is situated on an old Roman road (now the A639), described as the "Roman Ridge". This is believed to form part of an alternative route from Doncaster to York via Castleford and Tadcaster, as a diversion of the major Roman road Ermine Street, which may have been used to avoid having to cross the River Humber near North Ferriby during rough weather conditions over the Humber.

Anglo-Scandinavian history

The period of Yorkshire's history between the demise of the Viking king Eric Bloodaxe in 954 and the arrival of the Normans in 1068 is known as the Anglo-Scandinavian age. The modern township of Pontefract consisted of two Anglo-Scandinavian settlements, known as Tanshelf and Kirkby. In Yorkshire, place-name locations often contain the distinctive Danish '-by' i.e. Kirkby. And even today, the major streets in Pontefract are designated by the Danish word 'gate' e.g. Bailygate.

Tanshelf and Kirkby

The Anglo-Scandinavian township of Tanshelf recorded variously as Tateshale, Tateshalla, Tateshalle or Tatessella in the Domesday Book of 1086 existed in the region that is today occupied by the town of Pontefract. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle makes its first reference to Tanshelf in the year 947 when King Eadred of England met with the ruling council of Northumbria to accept its submission. King Eadred did not enjoy Northumbria's support for long, and a year later the kingdom voted Eric Bloodaxe King of York.

When the Domesday Book was commissioned by William the Conqueror in 1086, Tanshelf was still a sizeable settlement for the period. The town had a priest, 60 petty burgesses, 16 cottagers, 16 villagers and 8 smallholders, amounting to a total of 101 people. But the actual size of the population might be as much as four or five times larger than this as the people listed are landholders, and therefore the Domesday Book does not take their families into account. Tanshelf also had a church, a fishery and three mills. Archaeologists have discovered the remains of the church on The Booths in Pontefract, off North Baileygate, below the castle. The oldest grave dates from around 690. The church is likely to be at Tanshelf and may have been similar to the church at Ledsham. The area which is now the town market place was the original meeting place of the Osgoldcross wapentake. In the Anglo-Saxon period a part of the modern township of Pontefract was known by the Anglo-Scandinavian name of Kirkby.

Medieval

Norman conquest

After the Norman conquest in 1066 almost all of Yorkshire came under the ownership of followers of William the Conqueror, one of whom was Ilbert de Lacy who became the owner of Tateshale (Tanshelf) where he began to build a castle.[1] Pontefract Castle began as a wooden motte and bailey castle, built before 1086 and later rebuilt in stone. The de Lacys lived in the castle for more than two centuries and were holders of the castle and the Honour of Pontefract from 1067 until the death of Alice de Lacy in 1348.

King Richard II was murdered at the castle in 1400.[2] Little is known of the precise nature of his demise; in particular Shakespeare may have "adjusted" the facts for his own purposes. There are at least three theories which attempt to explain his death: He was starved to death by his keepers, he starved himself to death or he was murdered by Sir Piers (Peter) Exton on 14 February 1399 or 1400.

Robin Hood and the outlaw's Pontefract connection

The town of Pontefract and the village of Wentbridge are of central importance to the legend of Robin Hood, as it was told in the Middle Ages. The Fifteenth century Robin Hood ballads place the outlaw's activities in the forest of Barnsdale, the southern edge of which bordered modern Wakefield. The earliest surviving manuscript of a Robin Hood ballad, "Robin Hood and the Potter" makes reference to Wentbridge: "'Y mete hem bot at Went breg,' s(e)yde Lytyll John" ('I met him but at Wentbridge', said Little John). Likewise, the Fifteenth Century ballad "A Gest of Robyn Hode", appears to make a cryptic reference to the village by depicting a friendly knight explaining to Robin that he 'went at a brydge' where there was 'a wraste-lyng' (wrestling). Significantly, the Gest of Robyn Hode makes a very specific reference to a location within Wentbridge known as 'the Saylis' and 'the Sayles', as in a four line stanza the outlaw chief instructs his Merry Men to

<poem>

Walk up to the Saylis
And so to Watling Street
And wait after some uncouth guest
Upon Chance you may them meet

</poem>

The 19th-century antiquarian Joseph Hunter identified the site of the Saylis: a small tenancy, of one-tenth of a knight's fee (i.e. a knight's annual income), located on high ground 500 yards (457.2 metres) to the east of the village of Wentbridge in the manor of Pontefract. The Saylis is recorded as having contributed towards the aid that was granted to King Edward III in 1346–47 for the knighting of his son, the Black Prince. The late, great historians Richard Barrie Dobson and John Taylor indicated that this location provides a very specific clue to Robin Hood's Pontefract heritage, noting that such evidence of continuity makes it virtually certain that the Saylis or Sayles, which was so well known to the Robin Hood of the "Gest" survived into modern times as the 'Sayles Plantation' near Wentbridge. To commemorate this, English Heritage has sited a Blue Plaque on the bridge that stands in the heart of the village, above the River Went, lending weight to Pontefract's claims to be the true home of Robin Hood.

Wentbridge is a small village in the City of Wakefield district of West Yorkshire, England. It lies around 3 miles (5 km) southeast of its nearest town of size, Pontefract, close to the A1 road. During the Middle Ages the village of Wentbridge was itself sometimes referred to by the name of Barnsdale because it was the main settlement in the Forest of Barnsdale. The county boundary follows the A1 from the River Went to Barnsdale Bar, which is the southernmost point of North Yorkshire. Close by to the southwest is the Roman Ridge, a Roman road, known in the Middle Ages as Watling Street, closely follows the course of the modern-day A639. It was at one time, prior to modern construction works being completed, possible to look down from the Saylis upon Watling Street as it snaked through the village of Wentbridge and it is upon this stretch of highway that Robin Hood and his Merry Men are believed to have committed their famous heists. Earlier historians have usually assumed that this district was heavily wooded. However, aerial photography and excavation have shown that the region has always been a largely pastoral landscape dotted with occasional settlements.[3] In close proximity to the village of Wentbridge there are, or were, some notable landmarks which relate to Robin Hood. The earliest-known Robin Hood place-name reference – in Yorkshire or anywhere else – occurs in a deed of 1322 from the two cartularies of Monk Bretton Priory, near the town of Barnsley. The cartulary deed refers in Latin to a landmark named 'the Stone of Robert Hode' (Robin Hood's Stone), which was located in the Barnsdale area. According to J. W. Walker this was on the eastern side of the Great North Road, a mile south of Barnsdale Bar. On the opposite side of the road once stood Robin Hood's Well, which has since been relocated six miles north-west of Doncaster, on the south-bound side of the Great North Road.

Further evidence of Robin Hood's Wakefield connections comes by way of Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion Song 28 (67–70), composed in 1622. The poem strengthens Robin Hood's connections to Pontefract because it speaks of the outlaw's death and clearly states that the outlaw died at 'Kirkby'. Kirkby was an Anglo-Saxon settlement upon which the modern town Pontefract stands. In 2014, the historian Dr S. A. La' Chance published a thesis that detailed how a notorious medieval outlaw named Swein-Son-Of-Sicga, and styled by contemporaries as 'The Prince of Thieves' inhabited the forested areas of Barnsdale, on the outskirts of Pontefract, and made a living by robbing, amongst others Abbot Benedict of Selby. Professor J. Green indicates that Hugh Fitz Baldric, the late eleventh century Sheriff of Nottingham and Yorkshire, held responsibility for bringing Swein-Son-Of-Sicga to justice. Acknowledging this, La' Chance suggested that the Robin Hood legend is loosely based upon the deeds of Swein-Son-Of-Sicga. La' Chance closed his thesis by suggesting that, in all likelihood, the outlaw drew his final breath at Saint Nicholas's hospital, Kirkby (modern day Pontefract), which would account for the reference to Robin Hood's death in the Poly-Olbion.

Early modern history

Tudor

In Elizabethan times the castle, and Pontefract itself, was referred to as "Pomfret".[2] William Shakespeare's play Richard III mentions the castle:

Pomfret, Pomfret! O thou bloody prison,
Fatal and ominous to noble peers!
Within the guilty closure of thy walls
Richard the second here was hack'd to death;
And, for more slander to thy dismal seat,
We give thee up our guiltless blood to drink.[2]

Pomfret is referred to in Shakespeare's Richard II also.

My lord, the mind of Bolingbroke is changed:
You must to Pomfret, not unto the Tower.
And, madam, there is order ta'en for you;
With all swift speed you must away to France

Stuart history

Civil war

Pontefract suffered throughout the English Civil War. In 1648–49 the castle was laid under siege by Oliver Cromwell, who said it was "... one of the strongest inland garrisons in the kingdom." Three sieges by the Parliamentarians left the town "impoverished and depopulated". In March 1649, after the third siege, Pontefract inhabitants, fearing a fourth, petitioned Parliament for the castle to be slighted.[4] In their view, the castle was a magnet for trouble,[4] and in April 1649 demolition began.[4] The ruins of the castle remain and are publicly accessible.

Pontefract Priory history

Pontefract was the site of Pontefract Priory, a Cluniac priory founded in 1090 by Robert de Lacy dedicated to St John the Evangelist. The priory was dissolved by royal authority in 1539. The abbey maintained the Chartularies of St John, a collection of historic documents later discovered among family papers by Thomas Levett, the High Sheriff of Rutland and a native of Yorkshire, who later gave them to Roger Dodsworth, an antiquary. They were later published by the Yorkshire Archaeological Society.

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This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Pontefract. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.