Ripon City Ken

Ripon City Ken Promoting the City of Ripon, and surrounding areas in beautiful North Yorkshire 💙💛 through Videos 🎥 and Photographs 📸

📷 The Market Place depicted by Julius Caesar Ibbeston in the period 1805-1817.The mini Obelisks were later removed in th...
05/09/2026

📷 The Market Place depicted by Julius Caesar Ibbeston in the period 1805-1817.

The mini Obelisks were later removed in the year of 1882.

As the tour of Britain road race cycles through our fair City tomorrow here are a few shots from 2014 when the biggest r...
04/09/2026

As the tour of Britain road race cycles through our fair City tomorrow here are a few shots from 2014 when the biggest race in the world came to Yorkshire and through our City, the "Tour de France" Allez Allez 🚴🏻‍♂️🚵🏻‍♂️🚴🏻‍♂️

A little Friday morning history on one of the premises around our market place here in Ripon, and a few photos of "Then ...
04/09/2026

A little Friday morning history on one of the premises around our market place here in Ripon, and a few photos of "Then & Now"

Have a fabulous Friday and enjoy the read 📖 and photos.......... 📖

🌟 1 Market Place (East) 🌟

​This burgage at the corner of the Market Place and Kirkgate was once much larger than at present because of 20thC widening at Kirkgatehead. In 1672 it is shown as being taxed for 6 hearths and being occupied by Thomas Hebden who was a grocer. His ownership is confirmed by the 1675 Burgage Survey where it is said to have consisted of one toft, one croft and five shops and to have been inherited by Thomas from his father George. However, it would appear that soon after this, Thomas must have sold or possibly mortgaged the southern part of the property because in 1686 one Thomas Thompson sold this part of the property for £100 to John Sedgwick, mercer.

Sedgwick, who was to be Mayor of Ripon in 1701-2 and 1715-16, was the nephew of Thomas Hebden.
​Thomas Hebden died in 1691 and after the death of his widow the northern part of the property where he himself had been living also went to Sedgwick, so the property was again united. John Sedgwick died in 1720 and the property was left to his widow for life, and afterwards to his four daughters. His son received only a bottle of w**e which sounds rather like parental disapproval although it may have been merely that the son had received his share of the family property earlier.

​The Average Award of 1747 confirms that the property was held by Sedgwick's heirs although the widow and one of the daughters had died. In 1764 the three surviving daughters and the husbands of two of them sold the property for £400 to Christopher Braithwaite, mercer. The deed refers to four shops, two gardens or orchards and two stables, and the property is said to be occupied by four tenants, one of whom, Sarah Haddon, owned the Unicorn Inn next door. The date 1765 found on the gable end of the property when it was being demolished in 1931 probably records the rebuilding in brick by Braithwaite, the new owner.

​Soon after this Christopher Braithwaite changed his name to Oxley as a result of an inheritance, and then in 1776 sold this property for £750 to John Raggett of Markenfield Hall.

J. C. ETHERINGTON,
LATE
​J. BATEMAN & SON,
LINEN & WOOLLEN DRAPERS.
TAILORS, HATTERS, HOSIERS, SILK MERCERS, &c.
Market Place, RIPON.

​Probably because of the rebuilding, the premises then consisted of two houses again occupied by tenants. The Humphries Survey of 1800 showed the property owned by Widow Raggett. It then passed to their son, another John, and was left in his will in 1808 to his widow and his brother for life, after which it was to go to his two nephews. However, only one of these nephews survived to enjoy the property and so it came into the possession of the other, Thomas Raggett, a London merchant, who in 1816 sold it to Elizabeth Sophia Lawrence of Studley Royal. (The price paid, £1890, included another Raggett property).

​The two houses on this site are said to have been rented at this time by Samuel Coates the Younger (*) and James Morley, surgeon. The property was to remain part of the Studley estate for the rest of the century for most of which it was to be occupied by members of the Bateman family who were tailors and drapers. The first member of the family to feature was Joseph who was admitted as a freeman in 1821. Some time near the end of the century the Batemans were replaced as tenants by James C. Etherington, also a draper.

​In 1903 the Marquess of Ripon, the owner of the Studley estate, sold the property to Sir Christopher Furness, later Lord Furness of Grantley Hall, who had made his money out of shipping. After the death of Lord Furness his son began to reduce his connection with the area and sold the property in 1919 to the partners of Becket and Co, the Leeds-based private bank. In the following year this bank was amalgamated with what was later known as the Westminster Bank.

The Bank did not themselves occupy the property at this time.
​A trade directory of 1922 shows that the Etheringtons had been followed in the property by Dixon Stephenson who described himself as a “robe specialist”, but a 1927 directory omits No.1 Market Place altogether. However NatWest Group archives reveal that the property was let for £120 per annum from 1924 to 1930 to a Captain and Mrs. Hartley, so it seems that they must have been

Storefront Facade
​Signboard: Drapers Etherington's Costumiers
​Side Sign: Etherington's
​J. C. ETHERINGTON,
(Late BATEMAN & SON),
Costumier, Ladies' and Gent's Outfitter,

Silk Mercer and General Draper.
New and Up-to-Date High-Class and Reliable Goods
IN ALL DEPARTMENTS.
DAY & EVENING GOWNS.

WEDDING & MOURNING ORDERS.
AGENT FOR THE FOLLOWING HIGH-CLASS SPECIALITIES:
Viyella, Worth's Corsets, Dr. Jaeger's Woollen Clothing,
Dr. Thomalla's Hygienic Under-clothing,
Lincoln and Bennett's Hats, Ford's Eureka Dress Shirts.
​DIXON'S,
The Blouse and Robe Specialists,
We invite your inspection of our
Coat Department.
where we have some exceptional
Bargains.
— Dixon's.
​running the Blue Bird cafe which was demolished in 1931 as a result of the Ripon Corporation scheme for widening Kirkgatehead.

The corner property was subsequently rebuilt further back in the typical bank style of the period and in 1932 the Westminster Bank moved there from the premises it formerly occupied in Fishergate.
​The Bank occupied the premises until after its amalgamation in 1971 with the National Provincial Bank; the newly amalgamated bank, the National Westminster, decided to give up No.1 and concentrate on its site on the south side of the Market Place.

Since the 1970s the property has been occupied by the Skipton Building Society.

​Jean Denton & Wendy Hunter.
​(* In 1771 a Samuel Coates had founded the local bank which later became known as Coates, Pearson and Coates with its headquarters in Knaresborough and a branch in Ripon, and in 1784 Samuel Coates Jr. was listed in Bailey’s Directory as a linen draper in Ripon, so it is quite possible that the Batemans who began to occupy the property in the early 19thC took over premises already in use as a draper’s shop).

📷 Number 1 Market Place East then and now

More about the history of our Market Place Ripon, you will realise when reading this the future is actually the past but...
03/09/2026

More about the history of our Market Place Ripon, you will realise when reading this the future is actually the past but was the future when it was wrote 😀 enjoy the read...................... 📖

🌟 RIPON MARKET PLACE: THE FUTURE 🌟

​A striking feature of the Market Place is the wide range of events for which it was used before World War II: fairs, markets, rallies and parades for instance. It was a safe place for people, mainly on foot, but with room for vehicles. Motors cars were at first a welcome novelty on the Square and surrounding streets but then, as their numbers grew and their speeds increased, they threatened to stifle more leisurely acrtivities.

​By the 1970s the narrow medieval streets were at times choked with traffic, including many heavy goods vehicles cutting across from the Skipton - Harrogate trans-Pennine route towards the North. Its continued growth threatened pedestrians, polluted the air and damaged property, to an extent that inhibited trade and discouraged any improvement or development. (There was however a benefit: much of the central part of the city escaped the kind of 'inappropriate' redevelopment that spoiled other market towns).

​The central square of the Market Place was devoted to car parking; that it was free was a matter of some civic pride ! Its convenience and popularity no doubt helped to bolster Ripon's flagging trade for a decade or two, but people forgot its spaciousness and if they stood a while to gaze at the surrounding buildings they risked being knocked down !

​Effective remedies required the diversion of most of this traffic away from the Market Place and at least the narrowest streets. There were various schemes over the years, all expensive, that progressed through the lengthy planning and funding processes to different extents before being abandoned. The difficulties were aggravated by the reorganisation of Local Government in 1974 resulting in the City of Ripon, an independent borough, being subsumed into Harrogate District, which became a constituent of North Yorkshire rather than of the West Riding of Yorkshire as hitherto.

​Eventually everyone agreed that the County would have to build a proper by-pass for the north-south A61 to the east and to improve the east-west B6265 across the city. During the early 1990s these works (which were very expensive mainly because 3 complex bridges were needed) were analysed, designed, funded and finally approved.

​Construction began with a new east-west route, avoiding the Market Place, and in 1996 the by-pass itself was opened amidst much jubilation. Though there were some teething troubles, there was an immediate improvement in the environment of the city centre, but the Market Place was still dominated by parked cars.

​The County's plans for these major traffic changes did not address improvement of the Square itself, which is owned and controlled by Harrogate Borough Council. The latter was beginning the lengthy process of developing a District Local Plan which initially included few changes from the status quo. Ripon Civic Society saw no sign of imaginative thinking in either of the Local Authorities about exploiting the forthcoming reduction of traffic to rejuvenate the Market Place, which is regarded as an asset second only to the Cathedral, and decided to make a special study of what might be done.

​A group of committed and well-qualified members began by considering the Market Place itself, but soon realised that the principal streets, traffic flows and parking would have to be included as well. To cut a long story short: a brief but radical paper was published and widely circulated early in 1995 and generated considerable interest along with some controversy. The most important result was that officers of both the Local Authorities recognised the merit of many of the new proposals and began working together and with the City Council, Civic Society and other bodies to develop them, and later to seek funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund. The County Council carried out several experimental rearrangements of the traffic and eventually what you see today was approved. The refurbishment of the streets to the east of the Market Place and near the Cathedral has already been completed.

​Meanwhile, the Borough Council worked on the redesign of the Market Place itself. The final plan is very similar to the Civic Society's proposals: the whole central area will be re-paved in stone; two avenues of mature trees will be planted; the toilets will be moved elsewhere, leaving a clear space between the Town Hall and Obelisk which will remain as the central and dominant feature; some car parking will continue but on only the northern half, and it will not be free; the taxi-rank will be moved across the street; lighting and furniture will be replaced; and all the surrounding streets and footpaths will be distinctively repaved.

​These changes will greatly enhance the whole Market Place for the pedestrian, whilst retaining the traffic pattern that is now established. Funding has now been allocated for these considerable changes and work began in the spring of 2001. The newly created open space will give scope not only for use by people who just want to walk about in comfort or sit and chat to friends during their shopping trips, but also for better staging and management of the many open air events that are an important constituent of Ripon's festivals and civic occasions. The road in front of the Town Hall can be closed when required without serious disruption of traffic. The popular weekly Thursday and Saturday markets will continue, the former occupying the entire area but with re-aligned stalls to make it more convenient for shoppers and traders. Thus the Market Place will be restored in the 21stC to the literally central role in the commercial, cultural and social life of the city that it has fulfilled for 800 years.

📷 A wide angle view of the square c1850, showing the Watchman shelter near the Obelisk. Gas lighting had now arrived

For those asking where the Crimean war cannon went pictured in front of the Obelisk, here is a little information below....
02/09/2026

For those asking where the Crimean war cannon went pictured in front of the Obelisk, here is a little information below.

The Crimean War cannon from Ripon Market Place was moved away from the square in 1896 to the end of Kirkgate near the Cathedral, and it was ultimately scrapped and melted down during the Second World War.

Arrival: The Russian trophy gun from Sevastopol was presented to Ripon by Lord Panmure in 1857.

Relocation (1896): It was cleared from the main Market Place alongside a Victorian drinking fountain.

Destruction: Local wartime accounts record the heavy bronze/metal cannon being cut up with oxy-acetylene torches during World War II scrap drives.

A follow up from last night's history of Ripon Market Place, enjoy the read 📖.......................🌟 RIPON MARKET PLACE...
01/09/2026

A follow up from last night's history of Ripon Market Place, enjoy the read 📖.......................

🌟 RIPON MARKET PLACE: THE LATER YEARS 🌟

​In the early 17thC, following the Town Book of 1598, the James Ist Borough Charter of 1604, and the consolidation of the guilds, the governance of Ripon and its trade and industry were set for a century or more.

​What was the scene over which the controlling burgesses presided ? The Market Square had settled to its present dimensions, but where exactly was the cross of stone standing in the Tollbooth which in 1612 was ‘moved from the place where it stood above 16ft high’ ? What of the surrounding buildings ? This was a period of great rebuilding and although much is hidden by later construction, only the Wakeman’s House after several facelifts now presents a 17thC or earlier frontage to the street scene.

​Celia Fiennes, visiting Ripon in 1697, wrote that the houses were mostly built of stone. There was ‘a large market place with a high cross of several steps........We were there the market day when provisions were very plentiful and cheap............notwithstanding, some of the inns are very dear to strangers that they impose on’.

The cross must have been decayed for in 1680 William Gibson had left £50 to the Corporation for building a cross in the market place. Action followed at last in 1702 when with subscriptions from the Archbishop of York, the Chapter, local gentry and principally John Aislabie of Studley (Mayor at the time), the obelisk designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor was erected - the earliest freestanding obelisk in England.

Hawksmoor’s project for paving the Square was not undertaken and various supporting embellishments were soon removed; interestingly the plinth was to be 9ft above the step ‘set rough.....to keep idle persons from making letters and writing what they please upon it, and doing other Mischieves and Brutalities’.
​Repairs to the Obelisk were carried out in 1735 and there was major renovation in 1781 after which the present misleading tablet was attached to the south face. A palisade was removed and four smaller columns erected at the corners.

​Much re-building was going on during this period; a rain water head (now removed) on the Halifax Bank building, was dated about 1730 and the upper storeys of several other properties are of Georgian date. This culminated in Wyatt’s Town Hall of 1800, though some earlier structures must have remained. As Tuting notes ‘Now 1842 - not one thatched roof’.

​The Market Square was a busy place - in addition to the weekly markets several fairs were held for the sale of horses, cattle, sheep and leather, all monitored by the Corporation. In 1660 the Town Clerk was sent to Masham to proclaim the ‘Forth Night’ Fair, and in 1669 when Boroughbridge petitioned for five new fairs the Archbishop was urged to intervene as this would be detrimental to trade in Ripon. The timing of the fairs was a matter of concern to the Corporation; in 1683 they suggested to the archbishop that the two great horse fairs should be held on Lady Day and Lammas and in 1707 the spring horse fair was advertised in the London Gazette and notices posted around the country. The Holy Thursday Fair was transferred to the first Thursday in June in 1761, with a
sheep fair on the following day, and some years later the Soulmass Fair was brought forward to the 2nd of November.

In 1838 it was ordered that four public fairs for the sale of wool should be held yearly in the Old Market Place between May and July. These events drew great crowds and provided an opportunity for hospitality and entertainment - provision for ‘Ale at the Cross’ is frequently recorded and doubtless there was much available elsewhere.

​The hub of commercial activity in the town, the Market Square was also important as the focal point where townsfolk and nearby villagers gathered, often for entertainment but also in celebration or protest as feelings were aroused by both local and national issues.

In 1569 Norton and Markenfield mustered support there for the Rising of the North, and in 1642 Sir Thomas Mallorie ousted Maulever’s parliamentarian occupation. One of the most tumultuous events must have been the Reform Election of 1832 when, after large sums had been spent on free ale and other inducements, the rival supporters converged on the hustings, the ‘Blue’ Tories via Westgate and the ‘Orange’ Whigs from Middle Street. The Whig triumph was shortlived in Ripon but reform proceeded apace - the Corporation was re-organised and freedom to trade in the town became free to all. To some Riponians the huge funeral procession of Mrs Lawrence which passed through the town in 1845 must have symbolised the passing of the old order.

​Much change followed in the coming years. The development of plate glass changed the appearance of shop fronts, and the coming of the railway must have increased trade for the cabbies. In 1858 the Crimean cannon was ‘inaugurated’ in an enclosure south of the cross (it was later removed to Kirkgate) and in 1871 a drinking fountain was presented - also to be moved later. The Watchmen who had patrolled the Square were superseded by police in 1874 and their sentry boxes removed. Later the four stone lights which stood at the corners of the Obelisk were replaced by lamps on the sides of the Square, and at the end of the 19thC trees were planted despite some opposition. ‘Lavishly appointed toilets with flowers and seats above’ were provided in 1899.

​There were recurrent complaints about the filth and disturbance caused by the selling of livestock and at last in 1900 the Corporation decided to concrete the Square. Another nuisance was the noise and disturbance of the Martinmas Hiring and other Fairs, particularly as steam-driven roundabouts took over from less sophisticated entertainments. There was also resentment that market stalls were being taken over by traders from elsewhere to the detriment of the local community.

​At the beginning of the 1900s all the streets opening onto the Market Place were widened, and in the following decade there was a good deal of re-building and re-fronting in a variety of styles.

The Cabmen’s Shelter was provided by Miss Carter in 1911. Cattle sales were also eventually removed from the Square. The Thursday Market continued to flourish, though increasingly dominated by traders from outside, and local shopkeepers gave way to national multiples. The Market Place ceased to be a residential area but it remained at the heart of the City; coronations and jubilees were celebrated and with the World Wars and the establishment of the Army Camp, military parades were frequent.

Whit Walks, when hundreds of children carrying banners and flowers gathered in the Square, continued until the 1930s. The invasion of the motor vehicle was inexorable and gradually the Square became a parking ground - spaces were marked out in 1968 and traffic management is still a matter of contention.

​Change there will be, but tradition will survive. The Hornblower will set the watch at the corners of the Cross (Obelisk), the Bellman will open the Thursday Market, and St Wilfrid will continue to start his annual progress from the Town Hall for the annual St Wilfrids Procession.

📷 The square in winter early 1890s. The Russian Crimean War cannon and the drinking fountain were removed in 1896.

Today's goodies from the wonderful Appleton's Butchers Ripon, one steak pie 🥧 and one sausage roll.And after seeing Toby...
01/09/2026

Today's goodies from the wonderful Appleton's Butchers Ripon, one steak pie 🥧 and one sausage roll.

And after seeing Toby's video advertising the pork scratching they had to be purchased, good job Toby.

We really are blessed to have our Appleton's but more importantly the fantastic staff ⭐

01/09/2026

Happy 1st of September Ripon or wherever you are watching this from, I hope it's a happy and healthy one for you all 🙏🏼 enjoy the video 🎦 from a empty and peaceful Market Place Ripon

The early days of Old Market Place (still named that) to the creation of our present Market Place (square) Enjoy the rea...
31/08/2026

The early days of Old Market Place (still named that) to the creation of our present Market Place (square)

Enjoy the read 📖 with more to come including then and now photos 📷

🌟 RIPON MARKET PLACE: THE EARLY YEARS 🌟

​Its buildings have been many times reconstructed but its boundaries, as shown on plans, disclose a market place laid out in early 13thC fashion on the largest area high enough above the rivers to be well drained ground, sufficiently level that traders’ carts would not slide away.

​Ripon developed nothing more than informal market trading before 1215 and a market place did not feature in its topography. Before 1215 the archbishopric had been for long periods vacant, inhibiting the formal establishment of a Market. Then Walter De Gray, the Chancellor of King John from 1204, was nominated Archbishop of York. He was an extremely able administrator and his establishment of a formally regulated market place was created by (a) establishing a defined trading area or ‘marketsteading’, (b) by surrounding that with carefully measured houseplots and (c) recruiting craftsmen to inhabit them on attractive tenancies called burgage holdings.

​Each burgage was a strip of land (a ‘toft’) with a dwelling place occupied by a freeman paying a fixed customary rent to the Lord of the Manor. In 1532 Ripon had 202 (and ‘a half’) burgages, most paying 4 pence a year and sited around a huge rectangle about twice the size of the present Market Place. Their frontages were either 30 feet or 15 feet wide.

The original unit of measurement appears to have been the ell (45 inches), so these plots were predominantly 8 ells wide, which appears to have been the standard width of burgage frontages in Northern England. The boundaries along the market’s original eastern side indicate an overall length of 160 ells from Kirkgate Head to Allhallowgate, providing space for 20 burgages (all 8 ells, 30 feet wide).

Some burgages along the western end of Allhallowgate formed the marketstead’s north-eastern corner where the place-name Finkle Street comes from Finkel, an Anglo-Scandinavian dialect word for a corner. The location of the original Market Cross, at the centre of the marketstead beside Cross Lane (now Lavender Alley), is exactly at the mid-point of a 160 by 80 ell rectangle.

​That 5-acre site provided a clearly defined area within which traders and customers could expect protection against fraud and immediate redress of grievances. Common law definitions for all weights and measures began to be established only in the late 12thC.
​Clause 35 of the Great Charter – ‘There shall be one measure of w**e throughout our whole kingdom.....of ale....grain....dyed cloth....measures’ – completed in 1215 their regulation at the time this marketsteading was being established.

Walter de Gray had been one of the negotiators when that charter was drawn up.
​From about 1216 – 20 the Archbishop drew annually a guaranteed income from the new inhabitants: rent for their burgages, novel types of income such as money-rents, market place and bridge tolls to offset the declining value of older (and fixed) labour services from his manor. That, not the creation of a market, may have been his principal motive because he had set about completing the reconstruction of the Minster. A Market appurtenant to his manor could generate a substantial income for that purpose. As the new building neared completion (1224) he transferred the relic of St Wilfrid to a new shrine at the east end of its presbytery, encouraging visits to it by providing pilgrims with remission of 30 days penance.

Their increased offerings funded reconstruction work. Their physical needs increased the marketstead’s cash flow. The busiest time for trade was when the saint’s relic in its splendid casing was carried in procession around the market. The Minster’s fabric funds and the trade of the market both benefited from Walter De Gray’s strategies.

​The Archbishop’s palace was one of several occupied intermittently during their peripatetic lives. They brought a considerable train of clerical lawyers, clerks and the servants who sustained their retinue’s communal life. Considerable quantities of high quality foodstuffs would be required for the archbishop’s household and noble guests. Their arrival also brought suitors. All brought an appreciable amount of trade to the fledgeling market.

Many needed lodging, food and drink, horse shoeing, renewal of worn harness, boots, shoes. They might purchase new goods and stock up with textiles, leather and metal ware before leaving.

​The distribution of burgages around this marketstead suggests that less than half of the expected house-places were taken up or built upon during its early years. Those on its western side have a noticeably different lay-out from those on the east, the result of its later completion. Mary Mauchline has shown that from 1230 to 1340 well-established groups of merchants lived here and lists of poll tax payers in 1377 indicate the marketstead was thriving: the tax gatherers listed them as inhabitants of a distinct ward.

Between 1215 and 1377 the market had completely changed the configuration of Ripon: 39% of all its tax-payers lived around the Marketstead. They paid 49% of the town’s tax; they were the most prosperous of its lay inhabitants.

​Occupations stated in the poll tax returns reveal a pattern familiar in late medieval urban economies. The wealthiest were two ‘merchants’, grocers who maintained stocks of imported goods for retail. Second wealthiest were the food and drink traders; then leather workers (mostly shoemakers); then mercers, drapers and tailors, the clothing trades. Tax returns cannot point out a distinctive feature that could extend a market’s reach beyond its immediate locality but a strange 14thC poem listing English places and whatever its composer principally associated with them singled out its horse market: ‘Palfrey of Ripon.....Colt of Rievaulx’.

Palfreys were saddle-horses; they were the most used by those who in the Middle Ages could afford horses; they were to the medieval economy what family saloons were to the 1920s and 30s. The Horsefair (now North Street) formed the north-western side of the marketstead and existed by 1229.

​When vacant plots around the young marketstead had been occupied, competition for trading space led to encroachments on the common soil, creating the pronounced bulge of the frontages on the western side. This was one form of in-filling, an encroachment on the common soil of maturing towns. In the 14th and 15thC another infilling process occurred by which stalls grouped on the open space around the Market Cross became permanent structures with living accommodation, some being given burgage status. Although the present-day ‘islands’ of shops and houses are later rebuildings, the Flesh Shambles which stood along the middle of what is now Queen Street is the only one of the medieval in-fills to have vanished, demolished piecemeal 1902-5.

Gifts of some properties to chantries show that by 1450 the open space was limited to a triangular space called by then the Old Marketstead.

Fishgate (Fishergate from the 18thC) and the passages either side of the Flesh Shambles were narrow footways until road widening was undertaken at the end of the 19thC. Crossgate (now Lavender Alley) remains a pedestrian way.

​At the centre of the infills The Cross stood on a stone pavement. It was roofed to protect the Corn Market which was held there. At the end of the market day, grain which had fallen out of sample bags and sacks was gathered from the raised pavement for the use of the Wakeman, a perquisite of office called ‘The Market Sweepings’.

To one side of The Cross was the Lord of the Manor’s Tollbooth. Its Hall or Court Room was on the first floor over an open sided space which by 1533 protected five stalls and a workshop ‘under le tolle Bothe’. Nearby was another manorial structure, the Common Bakehouse.

​The southern half of the market place was never in-filled and apparently some of its southern side was partially empty. About 1538 John Leland noted that ‘the very place where the Market stede and the heart of the town is, was sometime called Holly Hill of (from) the holly trees there growing.’ Because the northern half was so built up, market day trading from covered waggons and rented stalls was concentrated on this area which is now ‘the’ Market Place and the substance of this book is the history of the dwelling houses, shops and banks in this part of the original market place.

30/08/2026

A big thanks to Stephen for this little bit of royal history in video form 🎦

Both his dad (Mayor John McGarr) and mum were both part of a historic day back in 1985.

The banner above Kirkgate was made by Janine Potts.

Enjoy and credit again to Stephen 🎦

Address

Ripon

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Ripon City Ken posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share