Burn Bridge

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Burn Bridge
Yorkshire
West Riding
Burn Bridge.jpg
Cottages on Spring Lane
Location
Grid reference: SE300515
Location: 53°57’35"N, 1°32’39"W
Data
Population: 5,545  (2001)
Post town: Harrogate
Postcode: HG3
Dialling code: 01423
Local Government
Council: Harrogate
Parliamentary
constituency:
Harrogate and Knaresborough

Burn Bridge is a village in the West Riding of Yorkshire, two and a half miles south of Harrogate.

The village is set largely on the side of a hill. The Crimple Beck runs through the lower area of the village. The village pub, the Black Swan pub: apparently there has been a hostelry on the site since charcoal burners used it in around 1650.

History

The Black Swan

The name was first recorded in 1666 (as Burne Bridge), and appears to mean "burnt bridge".[1] There has been speculation that the place may have been named after a fire destroyed the bridge.[2][3] It has also been suggested that the bridge was named after the burn, or beck which runs along its southern edge.

Burn Bridge was historically in the township of North Rigton in the ancient parish of Kirkby Overblow.

View of bridge from Crimple Beck, looking west.

About the village

Allan Wood, a little bluebell wood, forms the boundary between Burn Bridge and Pannal Recreation Ground. Originally a commercial planting of softwood, it is now owned by the local council.

Malthouse Lane

Stonework on the bridge at the end of Malthouse Lane.

This marks the southern edge of the Burn Bridge settlement, and runs alongside Crimple Beck.

Malthouse Lane courtyard and milldam

There were mills on the site next to Malthouse Lane bridge from the 14th century.[2] The corn mill nearest to the bridge backed onto the milldam, and housed the water wheel. Now converted to housing, it still contains the original wooden bevel gears which were driven by the water wheel. The milldam was fed from Crimple Beck by way of a goit upstream, and the water ran off via a culvert under the corn mill and returned to the stream near Malthouse Lane bridge. The milldam was drained c. 1975 and is now a wildlife preserve under a woodland preservation order. Fauna such as woodpeckers and willow warblers are colonising this site.

The Victorian house between the courtyard and Pannal Cricket Ground is Bridge House, which was once the farm house of Thomas Hudson, who owned much of the local land to the south of Crimple Beck. His barn stands on the other side of the cricket ground, and is now converted to housing. The barn had cow byres and stables behind. The attached semicircular gin gang, where a horse turned the grinding mill for the corn, existed until the winter of 2010–2011, when it was demolished to be rebuilt as domestic accommodation.

The malthouse

The malthouse was built on farmland nearby, in what is now Malthouse Lane. The malthouse was built c. 1876 by farmer Thomas Hudson, who bought the land for the purpose in that year from landowner Eliza Penelope Bentley of Pannal Hall. Wagons brought coal and barley from a railway siding whose remaining containing wall for the coal can still be seen by the Harrogate Line. The malthouse was demolished in 1975, but the malthouse manager's house remains.[2] The cobbled yard of that house was the malthouse coalyard, and steps once led down from the coalyard to the boiler room and river. Four houses, built in 1975, now stand on the malthouse site.

Rose Cottage

Crimple Beck Cottage, the two-storey house opposite the malthouse which was previously called Rose Cottage, was built before 1840.[4] An early 20th-century photograph of the malthouse shows Rose Cottage as a much smaller single-storey building.[2]

Outside links

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("Wikimedia Commons" has material
about Burn Bridge)

References

  1. Smith, A. H. (1961). The Place-names of the West Riding of Yorkshire. 5. Cambridge University Press. p. 117. 
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Information from Postcards from Pannal by Anne Smith (Self-published by Anne Smith, Harrogate. Undated; c. 2000).
  3. Ancestry.com: historical photos of the previous Black Swan building.
  4. It is marked on the 1840 map of the area. A copy of the map is held at the Victoria Library in Harrogate.