CAYDALE MILL
There was a mill at Cairedale when Old Byland was an abbey grange but it is impossible to date its origin though it could have been there as early as the 14th century. The earliest surviving record of an Old Byland miller goes back over 450 years to John Bellwood in 1535 and 63 years later Christopher Saxton’s map of Old Byland showed a water mill and a walk mill which would have been used for fulling cloth.which would have been stretched on tenter frames on land above the walk mill.
John Blanchard had a paper mill in Old Byland early in the 17th century which is likelt to have been on the same site but paper making had ceased by 1635.
John Harrison had a water mill for at least twenty years between 1690 and 1717 and it is possible that his father Samuel was there in 1670 and Thomas Dobson was the tenant of the mill and 137 acres in 1772 when a list of necessary repairs included a new water wheel
Thomas Bradley had the mill between 1799 and 1817 and his son Thomas was still there in 1833 and was followed by Aaron Robinson and his brother John who had moved from Rievaulx and become tenants at Caydale by 1846. The family had moved from Thornton le Dale to Rievaulx in 1823 when Thomas the father of Aaron and John had become the Rievaulx miller and another son Thomas married Mary Peacock of Tile House in 1842 and as their children John and Mary Ann were born there in 1842 and 1847 it appears that they lived at the farm although Thomas ran the mill during that period but Aaron Robinson held the tenancy at Caydale in 1851 and his brother John worked as a labourer before returning to run the mill at Rievaulx and Aaron continued to hold the tenancy until 1879 and it was during 1851 and 1879 that the mill was being used for the pearling of barley and wheat but was then uninhabited until 1883 when Thomas Ellis moved there and was at Caydale until 1905.
Stephen Medd became the tenant in that year and was at the mill until 1928 when Richard Denton was there and was followed by E M Abraham who in 1935 presented the pearling mill to York Castle Museum where it was incorporated into the reconstructed Raindale Mill. From the late 1930s the property has only been used as a home and owners have included Doctor Armitage and Major Cecil Courtney Goodwin. The owners in 2004 are Dr John Settle and his wife Elizabeth.
WEATHERCOTE FARM
The Byland Abbey Grange of Wethercote was situated about a mile south-west of the present-day farm and was an out station of Murton Grange. From its beginnings in the 12th century it grew to be a very large sheep station and there was a dispute between a Byland abbot and Nicholas de Boltby concerning his impounding of Byland animals. In 1598 George Hutton age 75 told Commissioners that he had been born at Wethercote and like his father before him had been a herdsman there.
Sir Richard Bellasis was granted Murton and Wethercote by Henry VIII after he had dissolved nine monasteries in the north of England and it was his nephew William who had the dispute with Sir Edward Wotton about the boundaries between their manors. Saxton’s survey of 1598 recorded 186 acres known as Wethercote Lamb Close and 196 known as the Wether Laiers and over a hundred years later the Land Tax records pose a question that is impossible to answer.
