Village of the Week: The hamlet with the last working village green in the country and fears over a pagan ritual

Robin Hood’s Bay, on the other hand, there is a theory that Robin Hood himself worked as a fisherman in Scarborough and with Stamford Bridge, the bridge is the clue.

And you probably don’t need to be a historian to figure out the back story to the village name of Nun Monkton which is nestled in North Yorkshire.

Between Harrogate and the north west of the city of York, the village is home to less than 200 people.

Its quaint setting sees its hub being based around the village green where cows graze in summer and cool off in the pond, there are no street lights and there are just 44 pupils on the school register from the ages of four to 11, some inner city urban schools would have almost this many kids in one class.

Anyway, how the village came to be in its first form dates back to pre-Viking or Anglo-Saxon times of the eighth and ninth centuries where a hermitage or small monastic settlement may have been here prior to the arrival of the Vikings, hence the 'Monkton' part of the village's name.

The nuns came after the Norman Conquest and in 1172, landowner, Ivetta of the Arches, endowed a small convent of the Order of Saint Benedict, which owned the village.

The Priory existed until 1536 when it was dissolved by Henry VIII and the nuns were returned to their families.

What remains of the Priory is a historic house which has been altered and restored over the years but was grade II listed in 1952.

Nun Monkton village, as an estate, was passed through various family trees but started, notably, with John Neville, the 3rd Baron Latimer who was the second husband of Katherine Parr (she his third wife) and the last wife of Henry VIII – who of course approved the dissolution of monasteries.

During the later 17th century and the first half of the 18th century, it was owned by the Payler (or Paylor) family and then the Tufnell family. In 1860, Isaac Crawhall, a Durham-born gentleman, bought Nun Monkton from the Tufnell family and his family owned the estate and lived at the Priory until it was bought by the Whitworth family in the 1920s.

There have been some famous visitors to Nun Monkton over the years.

George IV visited in 1789 and had lunch at the Priory when he was still the Prince of Wales and was on a trip to York Races. In the 1840s, the writer Anne Brontë, and her brother Branwell visited, as, during her time as a governess to the Robinson family at Little Ouseburn, Brontë taught the children of the rector of Nun Monkton.

The estate houses of the village were sold off in 1934 and Nun Monkton was no longer classed as an estate village. At its most populated there were around 350 people living here in the 1890s but it is said today that Nun Monkton is pretty much a commuter village for people travelling to York, Harrogate and Leeds.

Village life as we see it today, however, would suggest different.

Many of the village’s exquisitely fine houses look over the village green that is said to be one of the last working village greens in the country.

It is grazed by cattle who meander around the lush grass and are classed very much as locals, while geese have been spotted passing the time of day there too.

This is one of the hubs for village life past and present.

Back in the day many village greens had a maypole.

I am not sure whether Nun Monkton would have had one dating back to the Middle Ages, and prior to the following account, but there have been replacement maypoles and modifications over the years.

There was likely a new pole in 1793 and another new one in 1878 after the previous one blew down.

Vicar, the Rev Septimus Crawhall, was behind getting this one off the ground. He gave most of the money for the purchase of the pole and the rest was raised by public subscription.

It cost £25 and was made from a Norwegian Pine Tree and put up on St Peter’s Day, which leads us to another village custom.

St. Peter's Day is June 29 and historically was Feast Day in Nun Monkton. The night before the 29th parishioners and musicians went in procession across the village green where there was an old sycamore tree, for the purpose of "Rising Peter".

The effigy of St Peter, carved in wood and buried there on the same date in previous years, had been buried under the tree.

It was dug up and taken to what is thought to have at the time been the local inn and put on a view. The following Saturday the effigy was returned and re-buried.

On the evening of the first day of the Feast young men went around the village and collected and filled baskets with tarts and cheese-cakes and eggs for mulled ale, which were eaten during the above ceremonies and after that the village became the source of dancing, sports and suppers for every day of the Feast.

It is also claimed that a Vicar stopped the custom of “Rising Peter” as it was regarded as pagan.

There is a fine village pub called the Alice Hawthorn which was named after a racehorse born in 1838 and bred by local farmer, John Plummer. He named it after the daughter of his farrier and the horse won 52 of the 71 races she ran between 1841-45.

Just recently, the village held another extremely popular Open Gardens event where private gardens were opened to the public to view and raised money in aid of St Mary’s Church.