Bedale


Bedale, is a market town and civil parish in North Yorkshire, England. Bedale Beck is a tributary of the River Swale, which forms one of the Yorkshire Dales. The dale has a predominant agriculture sector and its related small traditional trades, although tourism is increasingly important. Northallerton is north-east, Middlesbrough north-east and York is south-south-east.
Historically part of the North Riding of Yorkshire, the town was listed in Domesday Book under what became the honour of Richmond. The honour had several wapentakes and Bedale was part of Hang and later Hang East.

History

Before the Harrying of the North Bedale was held by Torpin, a patronym retained by the infamous Dick Turpin. The parish church also dates from
this time, before significant remodelling. The original 9th-century church escaped destruction in the Harrying of the North and was recorded in Domesday Book. The recent discovery of the Bedale Hoard provides further evidence of high-status Anglo-Saxon and Viking Age activity in the area. The town was recorded as Bedell or Bedhal and derives from 'Beda's Halh', which means the corner or piece of land of Beda.

Under the Bretons of Richmond

After being doled out by Count Alan Le Roux to his relative Bodin of Middleham for a short time, the new market town was founded by Scollandus, a Breton officer in a hereditary position at Richmond Castle. Bedale Hall marks the site of a castle built in the reign of King Edward I of England by Sir Bryan FitzAlan, Lord of the Manor of Bedale and later Baron FitzAlan. After contributing to the defeat of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, FitzAlan succeeded the Earl of Surrey as Guardian and Keeper of Scotland for Edward I and fought at the Battle of Falkirk and the siege of Caerlaverock in July 1300. Fitz Alan was involved in a fight with William Wallace that led to the death of a comrade-in-arms and held the castles of Dundee and Forfar, as well as those in the Scottish Lowlands: Roxburgh Castle and Jedburgh. This baron also built Killerby Castle and Askham Bryan in Yorkshire.

Stapleton, Lovell and others

His co-heir jure uxoris, Sir Gilbert de Stapleton of Carleton, Knt, was a conspirator in the assassination of Piers Gaveston. Sir Miles Stapleton was a founding Knight of the Order of the Garter, who fought at the Siege of Calais and at the Battle of Crécy. The Stapletons were "Lollard knights" and were Lords of the Manor of Bedale for generations. Bedale had traditionally been a Lancastrian area, until the Kingmaker, Clarence and Gloucester obtained Richmond and Middleham Castles. Following the Battle of Bosworth Field, Francis Lovell, 1st Viscount Lovell led the charge of insurgency in the Yorkist Stafford and Lovell Rebellion against Henry VII of England, attainted Earl of Richmond. The inhabitants of the region went on several recusancy strikes, such as the Pilgrimage of Grace and made trouble for John Nevill, 3rd Baron Latymer in Snape Castle. This continued in the Rising of the North, with Henry VII's follower Simon Digby of Aiskew executed and replaced by Ambrose Dudley, 3rd Earl of Warwick, whose wife sold it to the native Sir William Theakston & John Jackson, after which it was resold to Cavalier Henry Peirse, whose descendants remain in town. During the English Civil War, Philip Stapleton continued in much of the same anti-Tudor & Stuart sentiment as Guy Fawkes, whose statement, when asked by one of the Scottish lords what he had intended to do with so much gunpowder, Fawkes answered him, "To blow you Scotch beggars back to your own native mountains!" Middleham Castle was subsequently ordered to be demolished by the Parliamentarians so that the Royalists could not take it again. However there is no documentary proof that this order was ever carried out.

Lords of the Manor

  • Sir Alan FitzBrian, Knt, Lord of the Manor of Bedale &c., was a descendant of Conan I of Rennes, Duke of Brittany. He had two known sons, the younger being Theobald FitzAlan of Stow and Quy, and was succeeded at Bedale by the elder:
  • Sir Brian FitzAlan Knt.,, J.P., High Sheriff of Yorkshire, &c. He was summoned to parliament from 24 June 1295 to 22 January 1305 by Writs directed to Briano filio Alani whereby he is held to have become Lord FitzAlan. Upon his death any hereditary peerage created by the Writ of 1295 is held to be in abeyance.
His daughters, Agnes and Katherine, were his co-heirs in his landed estates and manors. They were also co-heirs to his brother, Theobald. Katherine married Sir John de Grey, 1st Baron Grey de Rotherfield, KG.
The estate of Bedale and the Lordship of the Manor passed via the elder daughter, Agnes FitzAlan, whose marriage was granted on 10 May 1306 to Sir Miles de Stapleton of Carlton, Yorkshire, for his son:
  • Sir Gilbert de Stapleton, Knt., a younger son, whom she married before 15 December 1317, in whose family Bedale remained for more than a century and was still in the possession of their great-great-grandson,
  • Sir Miles Stapleton, who died 30 September 1466. His younger brother Brian Stapleton of Crispings and Hasilden, Norfolk, died at about the same time and they both left only co-heiresses.
The Lordship of Bedale Manor is currently held jointly by Lord Beaumont, heir of both FitzAlan moiety lines, but the Beresford-Peirse baronets retain distinction as having de facto possession of the manor, which was originally forfeited by Lovell's attainder and passed on to numerous instalments of government figures and subsequent real-estate purchasers, whether Digby of Warwickshire, Dudley of Nottinghamshire, native Theakston and Jackson, then Peirse, after which it passed by inheritance to Beresford of Derbyshire.

Later history

In the 18th century Bedale was a centre of horseracing. It was the place where races for three-year-olds were introduced in England.

Governance

The electoral ward of the same name includes Aiskew parish, with a total population of 4,601 at the 2011 Census. In October 2018 the town was twinned with Azay-sur-Cher, a small town on the River Cher in the Loire Valley in France.
From 1974 to 2023 it was part of the district of Hambleton and is now administered by the unitary North Yorkshire Council.
Bedale was part of the Richmond parliamentary constituency until 2023. It was removed and added to the expanded Thirsk and Malton constituency, in part owing to areas from that constituency being created into a new seat of Wetherby and Easingwold.

Churches

St Gregory's

The church retains some Catholic relics, although during the English Civil War Puritans vandalised features such as statues. St Gregory's has a painting of St George slaying the dragon, unusual in that St George is depicted as being left-handed, and also contains a stone Viking Age grave marker, notable for a rare depiction of the legend of Wayland Smith. When Scots raided the countryside, inhabitants expected to find security in St Gregory's pele tower. There is a portcullis at the foot of the tower for extra security. Bedale St Gregory is the parish church in the Church of England in the rural deanery of Wensley within the Diocese of Leeds and its patron is the present Beresford-Peirse baronet. There is a plaque in the church listing all priests of the parish. There is another plaque of the previous landlords of Bedale, featuring coats of arms of these people or their families: Fitzalan, Stapleton, Grey of Rotherfield, Sheffield, de Warrene, Brian de Thornhill, Lawrence de Thornhill, Richard, 1st Earl of Cornwall, Henry, 3rd Earl of Lancaster, Fitz Hugh of Tanfield, John of Brittany, Earl of Richmond, Marmion, Arthur III, Duke of Brittany and Ascough/Aiskew.
St Gregory's had a daughter church known as St Augustine's Church and Village Hall at Leeming Bar, no longer used for worship, and a Mission Chapel at Burrill. There are other local Anglican chapels, such as St Gregory's at Crakehall and St Patrick's at Patrick Brompton. Two other parishes with churches joined in the benefice with St Gregory's are St John the Baptist and St Mary the Virgin.

Others

The Catholic St Mary and St Joseph's Church, Bedale lies in Aiskew. There are Methodist chapels in Bedale, Leeming, Crakehall and Aiskew. Some buildings in the area also have their own private chapels, such as at Christ's Hospital in Firby.

Transport

Bedale lies on the B6285 road, which runs south and south east from Bedale and connects with the A6055 road at Burneston. The A684 road used to go through the town but a bypass was opened in August 2016, which means through traffic now avoids Leeming Bar, Aiskew and Bedale. The town is only west of the A1 at Leeming Bar via the A684 or via the adjoining village of Aiskew.
Bedale has a railway station on the preserved Wensleydale Railway. The station opened in 1855 and lasted almost a century before British Rail closed it in April 1954. The line remained open for local goods until the 1980s and for the limestone quarry at Redmire until 1992. The Ministry of Defence paid £750,000 to have the line upgraded and improved so that it could transfer heavy vehicles between Catterick Garrison and other MoD sites across the United Kingdom. These trains continue to run sporadically.
The line was eventually reopened in 2003 as a heritage railway between Leeming Bar and Redmire. The station is actually in Aiskew, since it lies east of Bedale Beck, which forms the boundary between the two. The line was later extended to Scruton as well as to the west of Northallerton.
Work on making Bedale Beck navigable to barges down to the River Swale at Gatenby began in 1768 and resulted in an area at the south end of the town known as The Harbour. The plan was abandoned in 1855 when the railway was opened but the weir and some iron moorings still exist on the beck just south of the Bedale to Aiskew road bridge. A public footpath runs along the Bedale side of the beck from the bridge for more than, passing the leech house, the harbour and the sewage works, first behind houses and then emerging into open country with fields to the west.