Place:Kirkbymoorside, North Riding of Yorkshire, England

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia Kirkbymoorside (#11 on map) is a civil parish and a market town in the Ryedale District of North Yorkshire, England, which lies approximately 25 miles (40.2 km) north of the City of York midway between Pickering and Helmsley on the edge of the North York Moors National Park. It has a population of approximately 3,000. Kirkbymoorside has served as a trading hub at least since 1254, when it became a market town. There are two ancient coaching inns extant, the Black Swan with its carved porch, and the cruck-framed George and Dragon, which originated in the 13th century. The Georgian façades point to later periods of commercial prosperity on the coaching route between York and Scarborough. The Norman baron Robert de Stuteville built a wooden moated castle on Vivers Hill. The estate passed to the Wake family in the 13th century, who brought prosperity to the town. However, it was badly hit by the Black Death of the mid-14th century, after which the wooden castle lay in ruins. Prosperity returned after 1408, when the Neville family took over, although little remains of the fortified manor they built to the north of the town. The Nevilles remained Catholic and took part in the Rising of the North of 1569. By 1660 there was a grammar school. The great Toll Booth in the middle of the town was built about 1730 with stone taken from the Nevilles' manor. The old Market Hall was gutted by fire but rebuilt in 1872. By 1881 the population of the town was 2,337. There is some disagreement over the spelling of the village: the alternative is Kirbymoorside, which is how the railway companies spelt the name on the station, and how it is traditionally pronounced. Signposts read "Kirkbymoorside". "Kirk" means church and "-by" is the Viking word for settlement, so that the name translates as "settlement with a church by the moorside" or, perhaps, "top of the moor". A valley near the town is known as Kirkdale.

George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, died on 16 April 1687, in the house of a local tenant, from a chill caught whilst hunting nearby. England’s oldest fox hunt, still running today, is the Bilsdale Hunt in Yorkshire, which the Duke founded in 1668. The building, Buckingham House, is located in the town centre. Manor Vale, a stretch of woodland managed by the town council, was part of a deer park and contains theGrade II remains of the manor.

In the 1600s and at least until the 1700s, a number of Quakers resided in this area and in nearby Hutton le Hole. The Quaker Meeting Hall built in 1690 still stands, although it was significantly modified in 1790 and extended in about 1810. This property is also a Grade II listed building. The Quaker evangelist John Richardson died in Hutton le Hole in 1753 and was buried at the Meeting Hall's burial site.

The town is home to one of the few remaining British producers of light aircraft, Slingsby Aviation. Many sub-sea vehicles and robots are also manufactured at Slingsby Aviation, which is located roughly 1 mile south of the town centre.

Prior to the nationwide municipal reorganization of 1974, Kirkbymoorside was the principal settlement of Kirkbymoorside Rural District. Historically, it was an ancient and ecclesiastical parish in the Rydale Wapentake.

Research Tips

• GENUKI on Kirkbymoorside.
• A Vision of Britain through Time on Kirkbymoorside.
• Original historical documents relating to the North Riding of Yorkshire and North Yorkshire are held at the North Yorkshire County Record Office, Malpas Road, Northallerton, North Yorkshire DL7 8TB
• Family history societies covering the area include the Ryedale Family History Group, the Family History Section of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society (based in the City of York), and the Cleveland, North Yorkshire & South Durham Family History Society (for the Cleveland and Teesside area and the western part of North Yorkshire, commonly known as the "Yorkshire Downs"). A more complete list may be found under the Federation of Family History Societies.
• A History of the County of Yorkshire from British History Online (Victoria County Histories), published 1914 and 1923 (Volume 1: the western part of the North Riding including Richmond and Volume 2: the eastern part of the North Riding including Scarborough and Whitby). A History of the County of York: the City of York is also helpful for the many North Riding parishes that were absorbed into the city during the 19th and 20th centuries.

This is by far the most complete history of the parishes of the North Riding to be found online. The volumes are divided into sections by wapentake (early divisions of the county) and the parishes within each wapentake follow in alphabetical order. The links above open to the indexes covering all the wapentakes in the volume.

• GENUKI has a page on all three ridings of Yorkshire and pages for each of the ancient or ecclesiastical parishes in the county. Under each ancient parish there is a list of the settlements (townships and chapelries) within it and brief description of each. Many of these secondary settlements became civil parishes during the latter half of the 19th century.

These notes are based on a gazetteer dated 1835 and there may have been a number of alterations to the parish setup since then. However, it is worthwhile information for the pre civil registration era. GENUKI provides references to other organizations who hold genealogical information for the local area. There is no guarantee that the website has been kept up to date and the submitter is very firm about his copyright, but this should not stop anyone from reading the material.

• The FamilyTree Wiki has a series of pages similar to those provided by GENUKI which may have been prepared at a later date. The wiki has a link to English Jurisdictions 1851 which gives the registration district and wapentake for each parish, together with statistics from the 1851 census for the area.
• A Vision of Britain through Time, Yorkshire North Riding, section "Units and Statistics" leads to analyses of population and organization of the county from about 1800 through 1974. There are pages available for all civil parishes, municipal boroughs and other administrative divisions which also include historical population and area statistics. Descriptions provided are usually based on a gazetteer of 1870-72.
• Map of the North Riding divisions in 1888 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time
• Map of North Riding divisions in 1944 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time
• Another provider of maps is the National Library of Scotland. In this index the Scottish provision precedes the English one, but the choice of maps for England is still quite vast.
• Yorkshire has a large number of family history and genealogical societies. A list of the societies will be found on the Yorkshire, England page.
• In March 2018 Ancestry announced that its file entitled "Yorkshire, England: Church of England Parish Records, 1538-1873" has been expanded to include another 94 parishes (across the three ridings) and expected it to be expanded further during the year. The entries are taken from previously printed parish registers.