Place:Thornhill, Yorkshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Thornhill, is a village in Dewsbury, Kirklees, West Yorkshire, England. Thornhill was absorbed into Dewsbury County Borough in 1910. It is located on a hill on the south side of the River Calder, and has extensive views of Dewsbury, Ossett and Wakefield. It is known for its collection of Anglo-Saxon crosses.

History

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

Thornhill is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, but Anglo-Saxon crosses and other remains indicate that there was a settlement here by the ninth century. In 1320 Edward II granted a charter for a market and a fair.^[1]

In the reign of Henry III Thornhill was the seat of the Thornhill family, who intermarried with the De Fixbys and Babthorpes in the reigns of Edward I and Edward II. In the reign of Edward III, Elizabeth Thornhill, the only child of Simon Thornhill, married Sir Henry Savile. This extinguished the family line of Thornhills of Thornhill which now passed down the Savile line. Thornhill now became the seat of the powerful Savile family. [1]

The Saviles later intermarried with the Calverley family as well, so that when Sir John Savile died in 1503 in Thornhill, he left provision in his will for his sister Alice, married to Sir William Calverley.

The Saviles remained here until the English Civil War when the house was besieged, (having been previously fortified by Sir William Savile, the third baronet of the family), taken, and demolished by the forces of Parliament. Some ruins of the house and the moat still remain at Thornhill Rectory Park.[2] This large house had a secret underground passage, that lead to Thornhill Parish Church. [3] just a few hundred yards away from the park. The passage remained until the early 1990s when it was filled in due to safety reasons.

Monuments to members of both the Thornhill and Savile families are on view in Thornhill Parish Church. [4]

Thornhill has close ties to coal-mining. In 1893 the Combs Pit Mining Disaster killed 139 local coal miners. Thornhill colliery resulted from the merging of Inghams and Combs colliery in 1948 but closed in 1971. Caphouse Colliery, just to the south of Thornhill, closed after the miners strike of 1985 and became the National Coal Mining Museum.

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