Although tenancy records are very fragmented and most of the earlier ones show no farm names an attempt has been to produce a brief history of the farms.
OLD BYLAND GRANGE
In 1556 William Storer was tghe tenant of the Grange which was also known as Storer’s Farm and Saxton’s map of 1598 showed Mr Storye’s ground south of the village. The Storyes were still at the farm in 1650 when Thomas Storye took part in a boundary perambulation and he was taxed for two hearths in 1673. After his death in 1716 the tenancy was taken by his son Thomas who was listed as tenant in the registers of the land of papist landlords in 1717 and as no records have survived for the period between then and 1772 when the Grange was omitted from the rent roll we have to assume that as Mr John Storye who died in 1743 was the last member of the family to live in Old Byland that as when the tenancy at the Grange came to an end.
The next available record is the Commutation of Tithes Valuation made in 1846 when one of the fields at the farms was named Esther Close and only two ladies with that Christian name were ever baptised in Old Byland. They were Esther Ewbanks who married Benjamin Cole in 1779 and their granddaughter Esther the daughter of Thomas Cole who was born in 1818 so it is possible that the family could have been at the farm some time between those dates and there is no other indication of of tenancies until that of Joseph Wass who was at the farm when his daughter Ann was born in 1842 and he was followed by his son Joseph who married Ann Hornby in 1879 and died in 1890 at the age of 35 after which his widow married John Lancelot Cossins in 1894 and he became tenant of the farm in the following year. It was an interesting relationship as in 1862 John Lancelot’s uncle Lancelot had married Ann Wass the sister Joseph who was his new wife’s father-in-law.
George Barker became tenant some time between 1909 and 1922 and the farm was purchased by Joseph William Bentley who had moved from Snilesworth to Old Byland in 1901 and farmed at part of manor farm for twenty years. His grandchildren Brian, Doreen and Kathleen still run the farm in 2004 and the family have lived in Old Byland for a hundred years.
TILE HOUSE
It is generally accepted that the original Tile House Grange was located where the Savignian monks first settled in 1142 and that the name originates from their manufacture of tiles at some building on the site. In 1535 just before the surrender of Byland Abbey the abbot leased Tile House Grange to Anthony Rookes and when his daughter Ann married Christopher Metcalfe in 1562 a settlement was made on them and their heirs of ‘a messuage called Tylehouse Grange with land at Tylehouse in the parish of Old Byland also free fishing on the water of the Rye’. It is possible that cloth was being woven on the site during the 16th century as Saxton’s map of 1598 showed a field of 4 acres known as Tenter Garth where the cloth would have been stretched on frames after fulling.
In 1645 Tile House was part of the Old Byland Manor of Lord Fauconberg, Thomas Hornby was his tenant in that year and after his death the tenancy passed to his son Matthew [Long Matthew] who married Dorothy Harrison in 1694 and when she died after the birth of their daughter in 1696 he married Ann Wilson who became the tenant after Matthew’s death in 1716.
