Kirknewton, Westnewton and Newton in Glendale

Kirknewton is first attested in documentary sources in the early 12th century when control of the parish church of Newton in Glendale was given to Kirkham Priory, in the Vale of Pickering, by Walter l’Espec (who also held an extensive barony around Kirkham and Helmsley, cf. Kapelle 1979, 198-9, Lomas 1996, 118).

In the early charters Newton is used indiscriminately to refer to both Kirknewton and Westnewton, but they were clearly two separate townships and manors by the mid 13th century. The feudal survey compiled for Henry III in 1242 lists ‘Newton and the other Newton’ (Neuton et alteram Neuton) as two of the constituent members of the barony of Wark on Tweed (Liber Feodorum II, 1120).

The form Westnewton first appears in 1288 when William Corbet sued Robert de Ros of Wark for entering his wood at West Newton in Glendale by force and cutting down and carrying off trees to the value of £20. However a variety of forms to designate both villages and townships persist throughout the 14th century and even well into the 16th century, as a quick scan through the Laing Charters and the 1541 Border Survey rapidly demonstrates (see below Selected Sources and Surveys).

The form ‘Neuton’ persists and is sometimes used to refer solely to Kirknewton, i.e. Newton proper, in opposition to Westnewton or Westernewton. On other occasions it appears to refer more generally to both townships – convenient device as the lordship of both townships was held by the same lord. Newton does not however refer to Westnewton solely after the feudal survey of 1242. Kirknewton is also labelled Eastnewton, a form which occurs as late as the 16th century and 18th centuries, whilst the pairing ‘Great Newton’ and ‘Little Newton’ (Newton Magna and Newton Parva) referring to Kirknewton and Westnewton respectively, is also found in the Laing Charters in 1270-80 and 1334 (Macdonald 1950, nos. 3, 21; see Selected Sources and Surveys).

The form which eventually became standard parallels the pairing of Kirkwhelpington and West Whelpington, further south in the county, two townships which again probably originally formed a single township, with West Whelpington being carved out of the territory of (Kirk) Whelpington, probably early in the 12th century (Lomas 1996, 80), to satisfy an expanding population hungry for land and manorial lords eager to intensify the exploitation of their estates. It is likely that Westnewton township originally formed part of a township centred on Kirknewton, since the church was located there and hence it is logical to suppose that it was the earlier of the two settlements, i.e. the old ‘new tun’, and formed the original centre of a single township of Newton in Glendale. Hence Westnewton could equally accurately have been labelled ‘Newnewton’.

When exactly the original ‘new tun’ (i.e. settlement, hence township) was really newly established in Glendale is a more difficult, but ultimately more significant, question to answer. It presumably relates either to a reorganisation of existing settlement or conceivably a re-colonisation in this part of the valley. It may be associated with the foundation of the parish church, but this is relatively little help since it is difficult to push the latter back beyond the 12th century on either documentary or structural evidence, although it must be emphasised that an absence of evidence of this kind does not prove there was no church at Kirknewton before 1100. This is a question must await the archaeologist’s spade for a definitive answer.