Craven District
Craven was a non-metropolitan district in the west of North Yorkshire, England, centred on the market town of Skipton. The name Craven is much older than the modern district and encompassed a larger area. This history is also reflected in the way the term is still commonly used, such as by the Church of England.
From 1974 until 2023, the name Craven was used for a separate local government district, formed originally as the merger of Skipton urban district, Settle Rural District and most of Skipton Rural District; all were historically in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Since 1 April 2023, the area has formed part of the new North Yorkshire Council unitary authority. The population of the Local Authority area at the 2011 Census was 55,409; it comprised the upper reaches of Airedale, Wharfedale, Ribblesdale, and includes most of the Aire Gap and Craven Basin.
History
Craven has been the name of this district throughout recorded history. Its extent in the 11th century can be deduced from [|The Domesday Book] but its boundaries now differ according to whether considering administration, taxation or religion.Toponymy
The derivation of the name Craven is uncertain, yet a Celtic origin related to the word for garlic has been suggested as has the proto-Celtic *krab- suggesting scratched or scraped in some sense and even an alleged pre-Celtic word cravona, supposed to mean a stony region.In civic use the name Craven or Cravenshire had, by 1166, given way to Staincliffe. However, the church archdeaconry retained the name of Craven.
Prehistory
The first datable evidence of human life in Craven is c. 9000 BC: a hunter's harpoon point carved out of an antler found in Victoria Cave. Most traces of the Mesolithic nomadic hunters are the flint barbs they set into shafts. Extensive finds of these microliths lie around Malham Tarn and Semerwater. Flint does not occur in the Dales, the nearest outcrop is in East Yorkshire. On higher ground microliths are found near springs at the tree line at indicating campsites close to the open hunting grounds. The valley woodlands were inhabited by deer, boar and aurochs, the higher ground was open grassland that fed herds of reindeer, elk and horse. No permanent settlements have been found of that age, hunting here was seasonal, returning to the plains in winter.Neolithic farmers permanently settled in Craven, bringing domesticated livestock and used those stone axes to clear woodlands, probably by slash-and-burn, to increase areas for grazing and crops.
Neolithic stone axes made from prized Group VI greenstone have their quarry of origin in Langdale in central Cumbria. Archaeologists, when mapping the distribution of finds of these axeheads, saw lines radiating from Langdale along the valleys of the Yorkshire Dales, suggesting, to them, a trading network whereon itinerant pedlars or travelling salesmen practised merchandising. However, it has been proposed that such economic activity is a projection of the 21st century CE onto the people of the 38th century BCE; a culture whose world view we may never understand. New methods of spatial analysis show that the location of axeheads coincides only with areas of higher population density, wherein the movement of greenstone items would have occurred very slowly, over many centuries, through local exchange between neighbours, or as spiritual gifts. The map of finds of Langdale axeheads shows only that Neolithic settlements extended along the valleys over a long period of time.
Roman occupation
In the first century the Romans, having trouble controlling the Brigantes in the Yorkshire Dales, built forts at strategic points. In Craven one fort, possibly named Olenacum, is at Elslack. Through this fort passes a Roman road linking two other forts: Bremetennacum at Ribchester Lancashire and another at Ilkley Yorkshire. Archaeologists describe the road as running north-east up Ribblesdale about east of Clitheroe, then bending eastwards near, then about north of Barnoldswick to pass into Airedale through the low pass near Thornton-in-Craven.Anglo-Saxon
To collect the Danegeld in 991–1016 the Anglo-Saxons divided their territory into tax districts. The Wapentakes of Staincliffe and Ewcross covered the region we call Craven but also areas beyond it such as the Forest of Bowland in Lancashire; and Sedbergh in Cumbria to the North. The Church was still using these areas in the 16th century.Norman Conquest
The farmlands were progressively taken from the Anglo-Scandinavian farmers and given by the King to selected Normans. The previous and subsequent landowners were recorded in the Domesday Book along with the area of the ploughland.The Domesday Book
The Great Domesday Book of 1086 did not use the later Wapentake district names in this part of England, as it usually did, but instead used the name Craven. The Book included lands further west than any later description: Melling, Wennington and Hornby on the River Lune in Lonsdale and even Holker near Grange over Sands in Cumbria.The historic northwestern boundary of Craven is much disputed. One faction declares that before the Norman Conquest the North of England from coast to coast was administered from York and named The Kingdom of York. By 1086 the Normans had designated only one county in the North of England and that was Yorkshire. One may assume thereby that the Norman Yorkshire of 1086 was much the same as the Kingdom of York of 1065; and the Domesday Book supports this. However the opposing faction proposes that the first Yorkshire was smaller, much as it was up till 1974, and that Amounderness, Cartmel, Furness, Kendale, Copeland and Lonsdale were attached to it in the Domesday Book merely for administrative convenience.
Also the Domesday Book does not describe the width of Craven at all, for only arable land was noted. Ploughing is a minor part of Craven agriculture, and cultivators then had been reduced by the Harrying of the North. Most of Craven is uncultivable moorland and the valley bottoms are usually boggy, shady frost-hollows, with soils of glacial boulder clay very heavy to plough. So ploughing was limited to well-drained moderate slopes. The higher slopes are so full of rock debris that grazing cattle still is the primary living in Craven, with some sheep marginal. Because grazing land was not tallied in the Domesday Book the full areas of the estates of the manors can only be induced
The areas of ploughland were counted in carucates and oxgangs: one carrucate being eight oxgangs and one oxgang varying from fifteen to twenty acres. This vagueness comes from an oxgang signifying the land one ox could plough and that varied with the heaviness of the local soil. A carucate was the area that could be managed with team of eight oxen.
In 1086 Roger of Poitou was Tenant-in-chief of the western side of Craven: Ribblesdale and the Pendle valley. In 1092 he was granted also Lonsdale to defend Morecambe Bay against Scottish raiding parties.
Soon after Henry I of England's succession to the crown in 1100 arose a rebellion of men with a variety of grievances. Several Yorkshire lords were involved and suffered confiscation of their estates. In Craven these were Roger the Poitevin, Erneis of Burun and Gilbert Tison. The King conducted a reorganization of Yorkshire by establishing men more skilled in government. Shortly after 1102 the castleries in Cravenshire were divided between the House of Romille and the House of Percy. The King was clearly intent that Cravenshire should retain a compact structure for he added-in estates from his own demesne. The result was two partially interwoven castleries incorporating nearly all the land in Craven. The Percy estates were mainly concentrated in Ribblesdale with their castle at Gisburn while the Romilles dominated upper Wharfedale and upper Airedale with their fortress at Skipton Castle.
14th century
Craven was still suffering from Scottish raiders; for example in 1318 they severely damaged churches as far south as Kildwick.In 1377, in the form of Poll Tax records, the earliest surviving detailed statistics of Craven were collected. From them we can compare the income brackets of various occupations, and the relative worth of villages.
The records list every hamlet and village using the wapentake system. The Wapentakes of Staincliffe and Ewcross cover Craven but also areas beyond such as Sedbergh to the North. Young King Richard II had commanded that poll tax to pay off the debts he had inherited from the Hundred Years' War. Its first application in 1377 was a flat rate and the second of 1379 was a sliding scale from 1 groat to 4 marks. However, the third tax of 1381 of 4 groats and up was applied corruptly and led to the Great Rising of 1381.
16th century
The Deanery of Craven had similar boundaries to the Wapentake of Staincliffe and so included the following areas which are not in the modern secular district of Craven:- A large part of what is now the City of Bradford, namely the parishes Keighley, Addingham, and the Silsden and Steeton with Eastburn parts of the parish of Kildwick. However all of Bingley and part of Ilkley, though never part of Staincliffe Wapentake, were within Craven and are also now within Bradford.
- The northern section of the modern Lancashire District of Ribble Valley, including Gisburn in Craven, and the Bowland Forest parishes of Bolton by Bowland, Slaidburn and Great Mitton, the latter including Waddington, West Bradford, and Grindleton.
- The north-eastern section of the modern Lancashire district of Pendle, including Barnoldswick, Bracewell, and the part of the old parish of Thornton in Craven which includes Earby and Kelbrook
17th century hearth tax