Acquisition of documents by the North Craven Heritage Trust

David S. Johnson

In September 2006 the Trust purchased a set of original documents from an antiquarian bookseller in Sedbergh. Members may recall that the Trust made a similar purchase in 2000 of 16 major documents relating to Craven at a cost of £1500. Those documents were copied and are available in the Trust’s archive while the originals were donated to the relevant County Record Offices with one being presented to Settle’s Victoria Hall.

The present set was purchased to save them from possibly leaving the area or from being lost to the general public. These, too, have been copied into hard copy and CD format for inclusion in our archival collection and the originals have been donated to either the North Yorkshire or Lancashire Record Offices, as relevant. A total of 77 documents was acquired, varying from single sheet letters to plans to legal indentures. The earliest relates to Bolton le Sands mill and dates from 1588 while a Customary Deed for Tatham is from 1757. All the other documents relate directly to Craven and span the period 1653 to 1937.

The purchase cost was £325 but the effective cost was only £264 as two interested parties asked for photocopies of selected documents and made generous donations to the Trust. As with the 2000 collection, all these documents are available to members of the Trust on application to David Johnson who holds the full Trust archive.

Ingleton - 48 documents; Clapham - 16; Horton in Ribblesdale, Stainforth, Coniston and Hebden, Arncliffe, Kettlewell, Tatham, Bolton le Sands, Gargrave, Malham - one each; miscellaneous - 4.

The North Craven Heritage Trust is indebted and grateful to Phil and Rita Hudson (North Craven History Research Group) for making photocopies of all these documents, putting them on a CD and hosting the copies on the NCHRG computer for any member of the public to inspect at the premises of Hudson History, Kirkgate, in Settle.