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EARLY HORSFORTH

Early beginnings
There are scant traces of the first people of the area that have survived to the present day. A few stray flint tools have been found by collectors, but other prehistoric material has been lost again after their re-discovery. The most spectacular example of this is an Iron Age gold torc (neck collar) which was found at Billing in the 18th century. This was made of twisted gold wire and according to Whittaker, a noted historian of the period, it was worth £18. One can only imagine what it would be worth now. Unfortunately the then landowner claimed the find and it disappears totally from the historic record.

An Anglo-Saxon river crossing
The name Horsforth is derived from two Old English words meaning a 'horse ford'. Old English was the language spoken by the Anglo-Saxons who seem to have settled in this part of Yorkshire by the 7th century and gave their names to many places along the Aire valley. Just where this 'horse ford' was is now impossible to establish. The valley bottom would present a totally different aspect to those early settlers. The river would not have been forced into its relatively narrow banks and there would be no canal to carry away excess water. Probably much of the area was still a marshy wetland.

Although the Anglo-Saxons gave their name to the present settlement, there is a tentative suggestion that they were in fact incomers', and not the original occupants of the area. A field to the south of the present Trinity and All Saints College is named as Ecclesgrass Head on a map of Horsforth dating to 1842. The 'Eccles' part of this name could derive from the word which the pagan Anglo-Saxons used to describe the British churches they found when thy first arrived in this country. Perhaps when the Anglo-Saxons arrived there was a small British community with a church on top of the hill. In time it would have became part of Anglo-Saxon Horsforth in just the same way that Horsforth has now become part of Leeds.

Was money being made in Horsforth?
There is a small group of Anglo-Saxon coins which have turned up in various places in the north of England, which provide a puzzle for archaeologists and coin specialists. Part of the inscription records the place where the coins were made as Orsnaforda or possibly Obsnaforda. People argue about where this could be, but many archaeologists believe that it is modern Horsforth. The inscription would fit with the various early spellings of the name and there is nowhere in the north of England with a similar name.

Domesday Horsforth
As is the case for many other West Yorkshire towns and villages, the first written account of Horsforth occurs in the Domesday Survey carried out for William the Conqueror in 1086. At the time Horsforth was worth 30 shillings. This is in marked contrast to many other villages in the Aire valley which Domesday describes as being 'waste' or unproductive. Much of Yorkshire seems to have suffered badly from William's punitive raids into the rebellious northern counties soon after he established himself as king of England. For some reason Horsforth seems to have escaped the worst.

A King's Manor
In 1066, Horsforth was the property of three unspecified thegns (Saxon noblemen). After the Conquest William kept passion of it for himself, although he never visited the place himself. The day-to –day administration of the manor was done by Norman sub-tenants, who in effect replace the three Anglo-Saxon noblemen.

A monastic estate
After the establishments of Kirkstall Abbey in 1152 a large area of land was given the monks. This land on the northern edge of the township was then turned into a grange, or monastic farm. The farm would have been worked by local people, not by the monks themselves, but any profits would have gone to the Abbey. This monastic farm is remembered in the present Dean Grange Farm, which portably stands on the site of the Abbey's farm buildings. Although no medieval structures exist on the site today, their former position may be represented by earthworks in the fields adjacent to the present buildings.

The beginnings of modern Horsforth
When Henry VIII closed down Kirkstall Abbey in 1539, the Abbey lands in Horsforth were sold off to private landholders. Among these were the Stanhopes, who helped build, or possibly rebuild, a chapel by The Green at the bottom of Town Street. The Stanhopes were to become prominent people in the town for a long time. It was a later member of the Stanhope family who built the present St Margaret's Church which was to replace the chapel his ancestor had built. Such entrepreneurial sprit turned Horsforth from a quite little community with a village green, first into an industrial settlement, then into a suburb of Leeds.

There's lot more information about local places on the WYAAS website at: www.archaeology.wyjs.org.uk
Have a look today. You never know what you might find.