Kilham : Later History

Remains Old Bakery Flue Mill Pond

The later history of the Kilham village and township, covering its transformation from the regular two-row village of the late-medieval/early modern era into its present form is traceable in maps, trade directories and photographs. The documentary evidence relating to the 18th century is summarised Dixon (1985, II, 370-1).

The rate book of 1663 shows the whole township of Thornton (Thornington) and Kilham including Kilham mill was held by Lord Grey with a rental of £396 (Hodgson 1820, 278).  In 1682 the property is described as (NCH XI (1922), 163):

• Kilham worth yearly £101
• Kilham glebe - £10
• Kilham tenements - £13
• Kilham mill - £20
• Lands and tenements called Kilham Hill - £22
• Tithes of corn in Kilham - £25

In 1701 all this passed to Charles Bennet, Baron Ossulton who had married Mary, the daughter and heiress of Ford, Lord Grey of Wark, in 1695, and was later created Earl of Tankerville in 1714. Kilham remained in Tankerville hands until 1913 when the farm of Kilham, comprising 2009 acres, was sold to Sir Alfred Goodson of Manchester. The mansion at Thornington was also sold off at the same time.

The form of the village at the beginning of the 18th century was depicted in detail by the Tankerville estate map of 1712 (NRO.4206 fo.13), discussed above, and was described by the herald and antiquary, John Warburton, as 'a large village" with 'a chapel in ruins' at roughly the same time (Hodgson 1916, 11).  In 1718, a court Roll of Wark Manor listed a single tenant at Thornington and four at 'Killum', plus five cottagers (NCRO ZBM 3).

Armstrong's map was inevitably less detailed, but suggests little change. The village is shown on a north-south axis on the south side of the Wooler-Yetholm road, and a hamlet at Thornington across the river Bowmont to the north. The mill is still located beside the Glen but slightly downstream of the position shown on the 1712 map, opposite the confluence with the Howtell Burn.

However the difference is relatively slight and may simply reflect a degree of imprecision of Armstrong's cartography rather than an actual shift in the mill's position. The 1762 militia list records David Henderson as the miller.  No later map marks this corn mill. Longknowe Farm, which had also figured on the 1712 Tankerville estate map, is marked to the south west of the village with another farm, 'Thomsons Walls' located a little further south, in the neighbouring township of the same name. The nearest gentry residence depicted was that of the Selbys, to the west, at Paston Hall.

By the time the tithe map was drawn up in 1840 the farm complex on the east side of the street was beginning to take shape, although the farmhouse itself had not yet been built. The street had been narrowed to its present width with a row of cottages lining the west side. The 1st edition of the Ordnance Survey shows the farmhouse set back on the west side. A small dam upstream of the village is shown on the tithe map and presumably fed the mill attached to the farm, which had replaced the old mill next to the Bowmont Water by this stage. Increasingly from the 18th century, and certainly by the early 19th century, Kilham's social and economic centre of gravity was provided by a single integrated farm complex. By the latter half of the 19th century Kilham essentially comprised a large farm with farmhouse, and rows of cottages for the farm's workforce (cf. Barnwell & Giles 1997, 89-90, 93). A few other structures such as a smithy and a post office only marginally impinge on this unified picture.

The development of neighbouring Thompson's Walls farm and township can traced in maps and documents held in the Goodson family archives. The township was derived from the medieval vill of Antechester (cf. Dixon 1985). The earliest map in the Goodson archive, dated to 1800, covers the entire Thompson's Walls estate and shows a coherent farm complex laid out around a square courtyard. The map provides a full record of the field names at that time, one of which ('Hemp Holes') provides evidence hemp and flax cultivation, which is corroborated by oral testimony regarding more recent activity on that farm.