Market cross

An unmissable feature at Emley is the stump of its ancient market cross at the junction of Jagger Lane and Church Street. Emley became a market place in1253 when a Royal Charter granted it a Five Days Annual Fair. A fine market cross was erected. Since then, all of village life and development centred on the cross. Proclamations were read there, sermons preached, hymns and carols sung and business conducted. The cross was broken during the Civil War on 21^st January 1643 when about a thousand parliamentary forces raided the village intent on pillage. They stole silver from the church and broke the east window there, also stealing sheep, books and other goods from Mr Farington, the parson. They then went on to destroy bonds and evidences belonging to Robert Hare of Thorncliffe and attacked Kirkby taking weapons, plate and money and taking the owner, Ralph Assheton, prisoner. Assheton was later released and the plate and horses returned by the order of Sir Thomas Fairfax, the parliamentary commander. Three pounds was also stolen from the schoolmaster, probably Mr John Wigglesworth (see below).

It is also said that during Feast week in 1826 one JohnTurton sold his wife, Mary, at the cross for two half-crowns to William Kaye of Scisset. She appears to have stayed with Kaye until his death when she returned to her lawful husband Turton, and lived with him for the next 30 years!

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Knights Hospitallers’ Cross

The perimeter wall of the14^th Century St Michael the Archangel church at Emley contains several ancient relics. There is a double Knights Hospitallers’ cross inscribed “RH 1683”. This was originally embedded in the wall of an old house opposite the market cross, thought to have been owned by the Knights Hospitallers and used as a hostelry in medieval times. A chapel belonging to the Order stood next door. When the house was demolished in the 20^th Century, the sign was preserved and moved to its present position. Members of the Knights Hospitallers, or Order of St John, looked after the sick in the village, and the Order owned land and property around the settlement up until the Reformation when it was confiscated.

Another wry inscription on the wall reads

“If Fortune keep thee warm

If Friends about thee swarm

Like bees about a Honey Pot

But if she frown and cast thee downe there and Rott”

Early School

To the right of this a stone bears the inscription “ Wiglesworth 1673” above two arches, one inscribed “PORTA PATENS ESTO” and the other “NULLI CLAUDARIS HONESTO” which can be translated as “let the door be open and not closed to any honest person”. Pictured is the surviving doorway to a school established in a corner of the churchyard in 1673 by Mr John Wigglesworth, whose tomb is in the church itself. He is described as a praeceptor of Thornhill, a schoolmaster or tutor, and a generous upright man of learning. At his death only three years later he left in his will land to provide an income for future schoolmasters and for repairs to the building, which survived until 1847, being demolished when the churchyard was expanded.

Another inscription nearby contains the words “John Jackson, schoolmaster, 1732, Entred, September……” One of the succeeding schoolmasters perhaps.

White Cross Farm

Monks from Byland Abbey originally built this farm as an outpost for rearing sheep and smelting iron ore. The white cross is a symbol of Cistercian religious houses, and the stump of the cross still exists in Emley.

By 1600 the Wheatley family were in possession of the farm. They may have been tenants of Byland before the dissolution of the monasteries. This family was an important one in the history of the village. In 1379 John de Whittelay headed the list of poll tax payers. In 1623 one Brice Allot bought some land from Richard Wheatley of White Cross on which he built Thorncliffe Grange. Twenty years later Captain Thomas Wheatley, fighting for the Royalist cause, was taken captive in Wakefield but agreed to change sides in order to resume his life as a farmer.

The farm bears several sets of dates and initials over its entranceways, relating to the family. A stone in the farmyard dated 1702 with the initials ‘TWM’ relates to another Thomas Wheatley and his wife Mary. Other inscriptions have the same initials and the dates 1758 and 1763. One of the buildings has the initials of their son, William and date 1737. William was the last of the Wheatleys, dying a bachelor in 1766. Pictured here is a marble tablet in remembrance of him in Emley church.

Cottages at Haghill

One of the cottages bore the inscription ‘John and Elizabeth Fisher, 1728’ on its east gable.

A memorandum of 1740 contains the wording “Be it remembered that I, John Fisher, did agree with the inhabitants of Emley to build a bridge over at the Park Mill, according to Articles made betwixt us; also to uphold and maintain the bridge with all needful repairs. Likewise to rebuild it up if it fall within the space of seven years for nothing from the date hereof”.

This John Fisher lived at Haghill and placed this inscription on his house there

“Look to thy house in every degree, As thy getting is, let thy spending bee”.

The Reading Room

In the late 19th century, local man Mr G. F. Parker composed a rhyming description of Emley in which he thanks Mr J. P. Lipscombe, the Savile Estate agent, for pulling down old decaying properties and replacing them with the Reading Room " a picture of beauty which has provided working folk with a cosy room in which they may ponder well the papers and thus learn their civic duty".