The History of Kirkbymoorside

Kirkbymoorside, or Chirchebi as it was called in the Doomsday Book, is a vibrant and historic town, often called 'The Gateway to the Moors' due to its location on the edge of the North York Moors and the fact the town had gates into it in the past.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Wednesday Market started in 1254 is still in business today, with a variety of individual stalls lining the cobbled streets, and is one of the few private markets left. Kirkbymoorside is full of history and the streets reflect the various phases of the town’s development. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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You will find the ancient coaching inns of the Black Swan with its carved porch, and the 13th Century crook built George & Dragon Inn, sitting alongside the Yorkshire Penny Bank and the Georgian facades of Market Place. A popular trading post for the coaching routes between York and Scarborough and across the moors, Kirkbymoorside once boasted a pub on every corner.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

 

Today you will find not only the original pubs, but cafes and restaurants catering for all tastes and a wonderful selection of shops. The 'Kirkbymoorside In Bloom' group is very active and every summer the streets are a blaze of colour with tubs and hanging baskets adorning the lamp-posts and verges.

 

Kirkbymoorside is the final resting place for one of history’s most infamous rogues, George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham. He was a favourite of Charles II and is described in history as a man with a passion for wine, women and intrigue. No stranger to political scandal, he was one of the CABAL Govt who exerted real influence over the policies made by the parliament and is said to have plotted with others in one of the rooms near to the Black Swan Inn. His scandalous love life is also well recorded. He had many lovers and introduced King Charles to Nell Gwynne. ​

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However, Kirkbymoorside is also within a key religious area. The beautiful and isolated dales and valleys are ideal for spirituality and religious communities, and it is no surprise that within a few miles you can find St Gregory’s Minster at Kirkdale, St Cedd’s Monastery at Lastingham, as well as the well known Rievaulx, Byland and Ampleforth Abbeys. Within the town you will find a Methodist chapel, St Chad’s Catholic Church and All Saints Parish Church, as well as the Friends Meeting House which dates from 1690.​

 

For the Kirkbymoorside History Group webpage, click here.​

 

For those interested in researching their family history in the area, the Ryedale Family History Group (email address ryedalehistory.org) can help.  

Kirkbymoorside has a long history dating back around 4,000 years to the prehistoric Bronze Age period.  The native Ancient Britons who inhabited  this location would have lived in a small rural community of roundhouses engaged in a subsistence lifestyle.  Life continued at a slow pace of change into the following Iron Age but this period came to an abrupt end in 43 AD with the Roman invasion and conquest of Britain.  There is no evidence that Romans lived in the settlement that was here but those who were living in the nearby villa at Beadlam would have been familiar with it.

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After the withdrawal of the Roman legions in 410 AD England was colonised by Anglo-Saxon settlers.  We can be certain that these people, who became the English, did live in the settlement that we now call Kirkbymoorside because carved stones have survived from their church which once stood in the churchyard.  The Vikings who settled in the area later left no physical evidence of their presence but they have given us the legacy of the town’s name of Kirkby which translates as “the place with a church”.

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The Middle Ages, which followed the Norman Conquest of 1066, brought significant changes.  The manor was taken over by the Norman Stuteville family and the embankments, dry moat and fish pond of their manor house can still be clearly seen on Vivers Hill.  During this period the Anglo-Saxon church was replaced by the current medieval church of All Saints’.  This was progressively enlarged under the patronage of the Neville family who had become Lords of the Manor and built a stone hunting lodge at the top of Castlegate.  The most important event during this period was the granting of the Market Charter by Henry III in 1254 as this elevated the status of Kirkbymoorside from a village to a town.

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The market brought prosperity to the town and by the Tudor and Stuart periods of the 16th and 17th centuries we can see evidence of this in the historic inns that had been built such as the Black Swan.  Houses that were constructed at this time can also be seen in the present-day townscape such as Buckingham House in which the notorious character and Lord of the Manor, George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham died in 1687.  Also, there are several houses still being used as family homes today which were built as traditional long-houses at this time, although often their antiquity is hidden by subsequent improvements that have been made to them over the years.

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The continued prosperity of the Georgian period of the 18th century is also reflected in houses that were added to the town and include Low Hall in Dale End and the Georgian House in West End.  However, there was also poverty in the community and the town’s first workhouse was established in Tinley Garth to accommodate the destitute.  Another public building that was built in this period was the Toll Booth, now called the Memorial Hall, and this was constructed from stone robbed from the derelict Neville Castle.

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The Victorian period during the 19th century brought dramatic change to the appearance of the town and the way of life of the community.  Industrial development took place including three foundries run by different branches of the Carter family.  The one operated by Christopher Carter in Railway Street, now Piercy End, also produced coal gas for street lighting and household use.  However, the biggest impact on the town was the arrival of the railway in 1874.  This gave residents a much better opportunity to travel beyond their immediate locality.  It also brought larger quantities and varieties of new commodities into the town.  These included bricks from different parts of Britain and roof slates from Wales which added to the variety of building styles.  More public buildings appeared such as the police station and schools in Tinley Garth and the new workhouse on Gillamoor Road.  A major event in November 1871 was a fire that started in a workshop on the top floor of the Toll Booth.  This completely gutted the building and when it was rebuilt the upper storey was not replaced.​​​​

 

Over the last 100 years the biggest change has been the expansion of housing around the edge of Kirkbymoorside, from Ryedale View in the 1930s to Manor Woods in the 2020s.  This has been the result of population growth and has required improvements in services to meet this demand, such as the building of the new Primary School in the 1980s.  Modern industries also developed around the edge, such as Slingsby Sailplanes down Ings Lane in the 1930s and Rack Systems on the Kirkby Mills Industrial Estate in the 1990s.  However, the town has lost some of its features such as the livestock market, the railway and all four of its banks.  Many of the small, independent family-run businesses such as shoe shops, haberdashers and ironmongers have closed and the premises taken over by gift shops or service industries such as hairdressers, estate agents and cafes.  In 2021 the town benefitted from the opening of a larger Cooperative store with an improved car park.

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Throughout its history Kirkbymoorside has continually evolved into the town that we know today.  However, evidence of its history can still be seen in its present-day townscape.  The attractive appearance of the town centre is protected within a Conservation Area for future generations to appreciate and every Wednesday the community can enjoy the market which has been a living part of its heritage for over 750 years.

Beneath the vast Yorkshire sky, where the North York Moors stretch like a rumpled green cloak thrown carelessly over the earth, lies Kirkbymoorside—a town where time folds in on itself. Its cobbled streets, weathered stone cottages, and the ancient churchyard of All Saints hold secrets older than England itself. This is a story not of kings or conquests, but of the quiet pulse of lives lived in the shadow of the moors, where every stone hums with memory.

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The Village at the Edge of the Wild

Long before it bore its Norse-Saxon name Kirkbymoorside, “the village by the church at the edge of the moors” this land belonged to the wind and the wolves. The Romans marched nearby, their legions carving roads like scars into the earth, but they did not linger. It was the Vikings who came to stay, their longships sailing up the River Dove to unload settlers hungry for fertile soil. They built their homesteads where the moorland met the valley, their gods—Thor, Odin, Freya—whispering in the creak of ancient oaks.

 

When William the Conqueror’s scribes scratched the town’s name into the Domesday Book in 1086, it was already a place of contradictions: a crossroads between civilization and wilderness, where farmers tilled fields by day and barred their doors at night against the howling dark. The Normans raised a church of rough-hewn stone, its tower piercing the sky like a warning to the old gods. For centuries, villagers gathered there to pray, to marry, to bury their dead and to trade.

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The Duke’s Last Gamble

By 1687, the churchyard of All Saints had seen generations pass, but none so storied as the man who arrived that autumn, cloaked in disgrace. George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham—once the glittering favorite of King Charles II, now a fugitive from debt and scandal—stumbled into Kirkbymoorside with nothing but a tarnished title and a trunk of moth-eaten finery.

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The townsfolk eyed him warily. They knew his kind: London’s wolves, who devoured fortunes and spat out ruin. He rented a cramped house on West End, its walls thin against the moorland cold. For weeks, he wandered the lanes, his once-fine coat patched, muttering to shadows. Some said he’d been poisoned by rivals; others swore he’d made a pact with darker things in his youth.

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On the night he died, a storm lashed the moors. The apothecary, summoned too late, found the duke propped on mildewed pillows, his face gaunt in the candlelight. “Oft have I stood upon the brink of ruin,” the duke rasped, “and now I am come to the depths of it!” When the church bell tolled at dawn, the man who had danced in palaces was laid in an unmarked grave. His ghost, they say, still paces the churchyard, trailing the scent of brandy and regret.

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Blood and Barley

Kirkbymoorside’s lifeblood was its market. Since 1254, when King Henry III granted its charter, the square had thrived with the clatter of hooves and the haggle of voices. Farmers sold wool dyed moorland-green with lichen, butchers hawked plump pheasants, and wandering minstrels sang ballads of love and betrayal. But in 1644, the Civil War came crashing into Ryedale.

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Cromwell’s Roundheads and the king’s Cavaliers turned Yorkshire into a chessboard of sieges and skirmishes. Though no armies stormed Kirkbymoorside’s gates, the war crept in quietly: hungry soldiers stealing chickens, rumors of cousins shot at Marston Moor, and the dread knock of tax collectors. In the King’s Head Inn its sign discreetly painted over locals whispered news of the war. A yeoman’s son, returned missing an arm, told of pikes glinting like a “field of cursed wheat.” When peace finally came, the market revived, but the laughter was thinner, the shadows longer.

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The Moorland’s Breath

To walk the moors at dusk is to feel the veil between worlds fray. Old wives still warn children of the boggart mischievous spirits lurking in peat bogs and of the Gytrash, a spectral hound whose howl curdles blood. In 1782, a shepherd swore he’d seen a coven of witches dancing near Blakey Ridge, their flames licking the starless sky. Even now, hikers tell of faint Norse chants carried on the wind, or a Roman soldier’s ghost marching the old road to Malton.

Yet the moors’ true magic is quieter the amber glow of heather in August, the cry of a curlew, the way the mist clings to stone circles older than memory. Farmers here still nod to the “old ones” when planting crops, a half-remembered prayer to gods whose names are lost.

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The Echoes Remains

Today, Kirkbymoorside wears its history lightly. Tourists sip ale at the George & Dragon Inn, unaware that Cromwell’s spies once plotted in its back room. Children skateboard past the 14th-century market cross, its stones grooved by centuries of cart wheels. Every Wednesday, the square fills with stalls selling honey, handmade cheeses, and stories—of the duke’s ghost, of Viking treasure buried beneath someone’s garden shed, of the night in 1942 when a Luftwaffe bomber, lost in the fog, jettisoned its payload harmlessly onto the moors.

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In the churchyard, visitors pause at Buckingham’s plaque, then stroll to the edge of town, where the pavement crumbles into footpaths leading uphill. From there, the moors unfold—a sea of green and purple, timeless and untamed. It is easy, in such a place, to feel the past breathing. The Vikings’ axes, the duke’s final curse, the prayers of monks long dust—all linger in the stones, waiting for those who will listen.

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Kirkbymoorside endures, not as a museum, but as a testament to the stubborn beauty of ordinary lives. Its story is never truly told, only whispered, season by season, by the wind off the moors.