Park, near Thirsk, and who have been owners of the same lands from that time to the present. In 1856, Lady Frankland Russell built a church here. It is a small building in the early English style, consisting of a nave and chancel, with a tower and spire at the north-west corner. It was consecrated Sept. 24th, in the above year, by Dr. Longley, then Bishop of Ripon, and was the last building set apart by him for divine worship before his translation to the see of Durham, and completed the number of 150 churches consecrated by him during the twenty years which he presided over the see of Ripon. Her ladyship also endowed it with £30 per annum. The valley of the Washburn at this point—within its frame of hills, moors, and woods, with its winding river, its church, factories, villas, and houses-presents a beautiful and interesting picture when viewed from the hill on the south side, a short distance above the church. The Manor House, situate on the hill on the right of the Otley road, is a large respectable building, surrounded by a grove of trees. It has been for many generations the abode of the family of Pullan. Blubberhouses Hall is situate on the right of the turnpike road leading to Skipton, and was rebuilt on the old site, in the Elizabethan style, in 1846. During the last century a family named Wardman resided here, of whom William Wardman died in 1699, and was succeeded by his son, named Thomas, who died in 1742. He had a son named William, and three daughters, Anne, Elizabeth, and Faith. William died during his father's lifetime, leaving a son, named Thomas, and two daughters, Faith and Mary. Thomas Wardman died without issue in 1751. Mary married William Hardisty, of Hardisty Hill, and had a numerous family, of whom Susanna, the third daughter, married Jonathan Ward, of Hardisty Hill, whose daughter, Jane, married John Gill, who, on the rebuilding of Blubberhouses Hall, went to reside there. He died in 1864, and was succeeded by his only son, Matthew Gill, the present occupier. The turnpike road from Knaresborough to Skipton passes through this township, winding up a narrow ravine until it attains the heathy heights of Kexgill Moor. This glen has evidently been torn asunder by some violent natural convulsion, as the indentations on the sides exactly correspond, and could they be brought together would fit into each other. A small affluent of the Washburn flows, or rather tumbles, down this glen. On the north side is a range of rocks, in a plantation of larches, which have been supposed to have been used by the Druids, but which a close examination will not warrant. vein of lead ore is now being worked in this rugged and romantic valley. The highest land in the township is on the moor, a short distance south of this glen, which rises to the height of 1,332 feet above the level of the sea. A On the northern side of Blubberhouses Moor are Brandrith Crags, a fine range of Druidical rocks, overlooking the valley called Redshaw Gill. The whole range is about three hundred yards in length, divided into three groups. The most westerly of these is about forty yards in length, thirty feet in height, and sixty feet in breadth. Many of these rocks bear marks on their summits of their dedication to fire worship. The middle group is about 150 yards east of the last named, but is much smaller in size, but similar in kind. The most easterly is about 100 yards from the last, and is the longest, the highest, and the most interesting of the whole series. The rocks on the western end are marked with a series of rock basins, cups, and a network of crooked channels leading from them down both sides; these channels are generally about three inches wide and as many deep. The eastern end is the most remarkable, and on the highest part is a large cavity in the rock of a most singular kind; it is about five feet ten inches in length, by three feet six inches in breadth, and about sixteen inches in depth, of an irregular oblong shape. On the northern side is a breakage through the rim, so that it will not hold above four or five inches of water at the bottom. All around the main cavity are a series of smaller basins and cups, of various shapes and sizes; the most remarkable being near the north-east corner, which is eleven inches in diameter and six inches in depth, quite perfect. This has probably formed the holy water stoup of some Druidic priest. Nothing gives us greater pleasure than being able to point out the birth-places of men who have distinguished themselves in art or literature; and Blubberhouses may be justly proud of one of its children-the Rev. Robert Collyer, who was born at this village early in the year 1824. The little school education he received was at Fewston, under the tuition of Willie Hardie, and which was completed before he was eight years of age. At fourteen he went to Ilkley, where he worked as a blacksmith with a man named Birch, a native of Lofthouse, in Nidderdale. In 1850, he emigrated to America, and arrived at Chicago in 1859, where at present he is pastor of Unity Church, one of the largest in that city.* In 1867, he published *The Chicago Republican, of June 20th, 1869, contains an elaborate account of the completion and opening, in that city, of a Unitarian church, of which the Rev. Robert Collyer is the pastor. About sixteen years ago Mr. Collyer was a blacksmith at Ilkley, and since then his name has become famous among the Unitarian body in the United States. Last year an American gentleman visited Ilkley, and took away with him the anvil at which Mr. Collyer stood, and the sledge hammer he worked with when a blacksmith; and in Mr. Collyer's new study these articles have been placed by his congregation. The new church was opened on the 20th a small volume of sermons, which ran through eight editions in sixteen months. A successful career like his would be highly creditable to a person with the advantages of education and station to assist him, how much more so to the almost illiterate blacksmith's boy! What difficulties he must have met with and overcome! and what a fine example he presents to working men-but more especially to those of his native village. The population in 1801 was 120; in 1811, 129; in 1821, 120; in 1831, 118; in 1841, —; in 1851, 83; and in 1861, 87. The value of this township as assessed to the county rate in 1849 was £601, and in 1859, £655. The amount assessed to property tax in 1858 was £702. of June, and at the close of the sermon the offertory that was taken reached 70,000 dollars, said to be the largest church collection ever made in the United States. From a speech of his delivered in London, on the forty-sixth anniversary of the British and Foreign Unitarian Association, and reported in the Inquirer of June 3rd, 1871, we obtain some glimpses of the feelings of the great popular preacher. He said, "There has never been a moment in the twenty-one years that I have been absent from this land when it has not been one of the proudest recollections and convictions, that I came of this grand old English stock, that, as I said this morning, my grandfather fought with Nelson at Trafalgar, and my father was an Englishman too, and my mother was an Englishwoman—that, so far as I can trace my descent back and back, and that is just as far as my grandfather, we are all English, every one of us. Well, there is not a day when I stand on the lake shore that I do not see the moors that were lifted up about my old habitation, and a little stone cottage nestling in among the greenery, and the glancing waters, and the lift of the lark, with his song, up into heaven, until you cannot see him, and a hundred other things beside that belong to this blessed place of my birth and breeding." THRUSCROSS. THIS township occupies the highest part of the valley of the Washburn, and also the highest land in the Forest of Knaresborough, of which it forms the north-western corner. It is bounded on the south by Blubberhouses; on the east by Thornthwaite and Menwith-with-Darley; on the north by Bewerley; and on the west by Burnsall and Bolton. The area is 6,340 acres. No part of this township is mentioned in the Domesday survey; and the first time we have seen the name in any document is in 1299, in the Inquisition on the death of Richard, Earl of Cornwall, where it is styled Thorescross. In the 4th of Edward II. (A.D. 1310), Thomas de Walkingham held two oxgangs of land in Thores Cross.* From this form of writing the word we might easily infer that it was derived from the northern god Thor, whose worshippers amid these rugged wilds upreared "the stone of his power;" and as the whole of this district received a large number of Danish and Norwegian colonists, the supposition is not improbable that here the Northmen "Reared high their altar's rugged stone, The term cross might be added after the inhabitants were converted to christianity. |