Nova Scotia Farm and Ladhill Gill

Image: © Mick Garratt Taken: 11 Mar 2022

A view north-east from Hawnby Hill. A view with several interesting features. Bumper Hagg, on the far side of Ladhill Gill, contains an abundance of pre-historic features. Cairns, and linear earthworks. In the distance, seemingly on the highest point of Bumper Moor, is Wethercote Farm. This was one of the main sheep-rearing farms of Rievaulx Abbey, running with probably 4,000 sheep on the surrounding moor. A phenomenal number compared with modern stockage. The oldest extant building at Wethercote is a late 18th-century L-shaped cow byre. The farmstead itself was divided into two during the 19th-century, each with their own outbuildings but re-united in about 1990. On the left, about half way up the hillside is the ruined Bumper Castle. This is dated as mid-18th-century but was well-built with a slate roof so probably built originally as a shooting lodge. It is said that the 3rd Duke of Rutland and the Marquis of Granby stayed here. But by the 1851 census it was certainly used as a farm as a Richard Hilbert was farming 127 acres. In the foreground is a residential property with a curious name, Nova Scotia. It is listed as post medieval so probably 18th-century but on the 1857 O.S. map the farm is recorded as ‘Novey House’. One possible explanation for this name is that on 11 March 1774, the Albion, a brigantine of 150 tons, set sail from Hull bound for Nova Scotia in Canada. She was carrying a cargo of woollens, linens, ironmongery and 188 passengers, all from Yorkshire, mostly the North Riding. Amongst these were Lancelot Chapman, from Hawnby, 49 years old, his wife Frances, three sons, and five daughters, and his brother William Chapman who took his family, his wife Mary, five sons and four daughters. Lancelot was a tenant farmer of Stebanthwaite farm, and said it was “on account of their rents being raised by the Duke of Rutland, so that they could not live”. Perhaps another reason was a deep seated intolerance against Methodism as reported by John Wesley when he visited Hawnby in 1757. Wesley wrote that ‘the zealous landlord turned all the Methodists out of their houses’. Now Stebanthwaite was located at the head of Ryedale near to Snilesworth Lodge. On the 1857 O.S. map the farmstead is recorded as ‘Stephen Thwaites’. It was demolished after 1918 with the stone being reused at the Lodge. If Lancelot was at Stebanthwaite, perhaps William Chapman was the tenant farmer down the dale at ‘Novey House’? But in any case, the migration of Yorkshire folk, mainly Methodist tenant farmers, continued to Nova Scotia for another year. In total 1,000 people, migrated to Nova Scotia occurred between 1772 and 1775. Perhaps another Hawnby family emigrated to Nova Scotia and the farm was named in memory of those family members who left to make a new life across the Atlantic. For sources see my blog http://www.fhithich.uk/?p=27543

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