It is perhaps not surprising that after the surrender of Byland Abbey its lands were divided between some of the men who had been appointed by Henry VIII to act as Commissioners for the Dissolving of the Monasteries and the greater part went to Sir William Pickering whose son settled his estate being the ‘Manor of Old Byland’ on his son-in-law Sir Edward Wotton in 1576 and it was he who had a boundary dispute with Sir William Bellasis whose uncle Sir Richard was another of the Commissioners who was granted Wethercote and Murton by the king. Bellasis claimed the strip of land that joined these two areas and the court in London ordered a ‘perfect plott of the places and grounds mentioned in the pleadings’ to be produced and commissioned Christopher Saxton to make the plan. He was required to contact the oldest inhabitants of Old Byland, mainly elderly shepherds and yeomen whose memories reached back to the period before the Surrender and could assist in establishing the correct boundaries.
Saxton’s map of 1598 showed that the area in dispute was a stretch of open moorland where the soil was too poor and sloping for ploughing and a place where the shepherds would meet during the monastic period. The plaintiffs fought hard to establish their ownership in order to extend their pastureland and the evidence favoured Sir Edward Wotton as witnesses were positive that sheep had never grazed on Lamb’s Dyke which separated the manors. A line of boundary stones proved damaging to the Bellasis case as they formed a straight line where the parish boundary still runs parallel to the Hambleton Hills and started at Roundehill on Hesker Dyke where Old Byland meets Murton.
Nine stones were sited at intervals along the boundary and unsuccessful attempts were made to remove some of them during the hours of darkness.
The Commissioners chose Byland Abbey as the venue for their court of enquiry which was held on 24 August 1598 and the verdict is not known but Saxton’s survey reproduced on the following page provides the earliest surviving record of the disposition of the cottages in the village and the names of the fields and their sizes in acres, roods and perches.
Looking at his map it appears that the layout of the village has changed little in the last four hundred years though none of the houses from that period have survived. He depicted the village green surrounded by 16 dwellings and the church and a back lane separating the village from what was marked Old Byland Cote thought to have been the shearing centre which appears to have been close to the site of the present-day Valley View Farm from where the sacks of wool would have been carted via Scawton to the abbey woolhouse at Thorpe Grange.
Close to the village were 3 large open arable fields, Est Feilde, West Feilde and Landende Feilde and a little further away was the ‘place where they washe shepe’ in a stream west of the fulling mill at Cairedale [Caydale] and between there and Tylehowse were Tenterbanke where the newly fulled cloth was stretched on tenter frames, the Walk Mill and Akinside Howse which was never subsequently recorded.
