VALLEY VIEW FARM
The farm is close to the site of Old Byland Cote which played an important part in Byland Abbey production of wool and though it was never named in the Bellasis or Wombwell rent rolls it is thouight that John Hornby was the tenant in 1772 and that the family tenancy continued as Mary Hornby seems likely to have been at the farm in 1851 with her son John whose son Joseph appears to have been born at the farm in 1874.
Although the 1879 estate survey shows Henry Banks as the tenant of Valley View Farm this seems to have been a retrospective entry as the 1881 census shows Banks at Hazel House, Ebberston but he was in Old Byland in 1884 with his wife Annie but had left by 1887 when Joseph Cossins was the tenant at Valley View where he lived until his death in 1896 when his widow Mary Ann took the tenancy and held it until 1911 when it was taken by William Sharp and his sons Jesse and Robert and it was the sons who bought the farm as sitting tenants in 1924 and they ran the farm until 1952 when it was sold to George Oliver Kitching and his daughter Sarah Elizabeth Dunning.
The farm was purchased by James Robinson and his wife Violet in 1963 and was inherited by their son John after Violet died in 2001. John’s wife Sally decided that diversification was the plan for the future by first converting outbuildings into holiday cottages and then developing a very successful business selling ladies’ lingerie from a web site, the first on-line business in the area.
MANOR FARM
There is no mention of the name of this farm in any records before the 20th century but according to Henry Scott’s survey and map of 1846 the land that was eventually given the name was being farmed by John and Benjamin Cole and it is almost certain that the Cole family were farming some of the land in 1717 and possibly as early as 1677 and Benjamin Cole born in 1718 had the tenancy in 1772.
John Cole had 160 acres in 1851 and his son John held all the land until 1886 when part of it was taken by Christopher Dennis and John Cole retained the rest until his death in 1889 when his nephew George Cole became tenant of his land and Jackson Sigsworth took the other acreage. As George Cole’s last payment of the Overseers’ Rate for the farm was made in 1898 the family tenure at what became Manor farm may have lasted over 220 years.
George Bristow then held the Cole land for a year and John Banks had it for the same period after which Joseph William Bentley became tenant in 1901 and in the same year John Chapman held the other part which his nephew Francis took over in 1911. Everything changed in 1924 when both parts of the farm were purchased by William Dickens Bell and his son John Henry Bell briefly worked at Manor farm until he and his new wife Sarah moved back to New Hall, Arden in 1926.
William Dicken Bell’s granddaughter Hilda Annie married John William Maurice Sharp and they purchased the farm in 1940 and later sold it to D M S Smelt-Webb who sold it in 1970 to Miss Margaret Potts together with Vicarage Farm, another 20th century name effectively making a farm of 311 acres which is farmed by Miss Pott’s tenant John Edward [Joe] Garbutt.
