The History of Kettlewell Village - Arthur Raistrick
First records
People often ask "how old is Kettlewell?" and the answer "about thirteen centuries" calls for some justification.
Some of the fields to the south of the village have slight, parallel terraces, called lynchets, made by Anglian farmers in their ploughing. These and the whole arrangement of the village and its fields and pastures are typical of an Anglian village of about the 7th or 8th century. At the Domesday Survey there were only about 60 to 80 acres of plough land but these were extended in the next two centuries to nearly 500 acres.
The village was a small cluster of timber huts and farm sheds around a single street, with a larger house for the head man. Just before the Norman Conquest a few Norsemen made sheep farms on the higher ground of the fells, and their dialect was absorbed into the local language and many of its words are still in use and can be recognised.
Soon after the Norman conquest the township became a Manor within the great Percy estates in Langstrothdale and Littondale but with Arncliffe, Hawkswick and Kettlewell left outside the boundaries of Litton Forest. The family of de Arches were granted the manor which one of their descendants divided into two halves, and the advowson of the church which the Arches had built was, at the same time, divided into two medieties or rectories. One half of the manor passed to the family of Gray and the other was given to Coverham Abbey with a moiety of the church. By the mid-fourteenth century the two medieties of the church were re-combined and replaced by a perpetual vicarage held by Coverham Abbey.
By an early grant Coverham had pasture for 1000 sheep in the Kettlewell Commons and when they got half the manor they leased four bovates, about 40 or 50 acres, to Bolton Priory. From the Arches family Fountains Abbey was granted six bovates of land and pasturage for 500 wethers on Middlesmoor and Knipe Scar.
)*( It may be pointed out here that there are other explanations of the name: one is that it can be the Viking name Kjetils Vall, the farmstead established by Kjetil.
| |||
|