Ravensworth Information

Law Reports: 1855 John Cockfield, Kirby, Ravensworth, near Richmond, Yorkshire, farmer : in the Gaol of York.

House of Commons Papers 1835
RAVENSWORTH Township (Pop. 300.) Two Daily Schools, one whereof contains 32 males and 12 females, and is partly supported by endowment, and partly by payments from the children ; in the other School, 6 males and 12 females are instructed at the expense of their parents. One Sunday School (commenced 1825), wherein 27 males and 13 females are instructed gratuitously by Wesleyan Methodists.

Patent Application 108. Thomas Harrison, of Barningham, Yorkshire, foreman on the Glebe Farm, and J. G. Harrison, Kirby Ravensworth, blacksmith, Improvements in Ploughs. Application dated 14th January ; provisional protection, 14th February ; notice, 27th May ; patent sealed 11th July, 1862.

KIRKBY RAVENSWORTH.
This place has the character of an anciently fortified position, though no positive remains have been discovered there.

About 220 yards west of the church, a dike or way seems to have crossed the road, towards what had probably in late years been a quarry, and, stretching up the hill along
the western boundary of the glebe lands, to have turned off into a valley, where a stream joins the Whashton Springs brook. This stream crosses the road from Whashton to
Sturdyhouse, about 1100 yards south of Whashton.

This may have been the ancient way from Ravensworth Castle ; but the name Hergill, applied to the road up the hill, close to the quarry above-mentioned, may possibly
indicate that the occupation of the ground about the church dates from a very remote and even from the British period.

The ruins of Ravensworth Castle stand on a less exposed situation than the church, close to the village, and near the ford over the Gilling Beck, which probably gave name to the
place ; for in ancient writings the name is Ravenswath, aii'l walk is the Anglo-Saxon word signifying a '' ford.'' occasionally used in this sense in the present day by the old
inhabitants of the North Riding.

The antiquities of this castle have been already described in topographical works, and do not come within the immediate object of this paper. The Norman family of Fitzhugh
possessed this place.

These are the only camps, or places of defence, within the triangular district ; but, as there are others in the neighbourhood which may be considered to form a part of the defences of the whole country, a notice of them may not be out of place here.

April 1855 Obituary: At Helwith House, Kirby Ravensworth, aged 74, James Hutchinson,esq.

POET:

SHAW, (Cuthbert,) a poet, was born in 1738, at Ravensworth, in Yorkshire, where his father was a shoemaker, and educated at the free-school of Scorton,
where he became usher, as he subsequently did in that at Darlington. He afterwards came to London, and was for some time an actor, but abandoned the profession for that of on author.
He wrote, Liberty, a Poem; Odes on the Four Seasons; these were published under the name of W. Seymour ; The Four Farthing Candles ; The Race ; A Monody to the Memory of л Young Lady who died in Childbed, to which is added, An Evening Address to a Nightingale, by an Afflicted Husband ; and Corruption, a Satire.
He died in 1771, at the early age of thirty-three, of a disease occasioned by his dissipated habits. A more complete biography on Shaw (including poems) can be found here Biography on Shaw Cuthbert Poems are after the biography after some blank pages.

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