Birkby is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

about 6 miles north of the county town of

Northallerton Northallerton ( ) is a market town and civil parish in North Yorkshire, England. It is near the River Wiske in the Vale of Mowbray and had a population of 16,832 in 2011. Northallerton is an administrative centre for York and North Yorkshire ...

in the county of

North Yorkshire North Yorkshire is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in Northern England.The Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority areas of City of York, York and North Yorkshire (district), North Yorkshire are in Yorkshire and t ...

, England. The population of the parish was estimated at 40 in 2016.

Etymology

The name of the village, first recorded in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book ( ; the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book") is a manuscript record of the Great Survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...

of 1086 as ''Bretebi'', is derived from the

Old Norse Old Norse, also referred to as Old Nordic or Old Scandinavian, was a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants ...

''Breta býr'', meaning "village of Britons".

History

The

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

inhabitants encountered by the

Vikings Vikings were seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9� ...

may have descended from Britons pushed back here by the advancing English, or they may have come to Yorkshire from the Lake District with Viking settlers from there. An alternative etymology is a combination of an Old Norse personal name ''Bretar'' and the suffix '-by' to give the meaning ''Bretar's farm''. At the time of the Norman invasion the manor was the possession of Earl Edwin, but was subsequently taken by the Crown. The manor followed the descent of the lord of Northallerton, but a mesne lordship was granted to ''Henry de Farlington''. By 1316 the manor was in the possession of ''John de Lisle'' and soon after entered the holdings of the ''Scrope'' family. By the middle of the 16th century, the manor had passed to the ''Foljambe'' family and thence by marriages to the ''Grimston's'', who were still in possession of the titles in 1821. There are the foundations of a medieval settlement opposite the rectory near Hill Top Farm that shows the outline of associated fields that may have been moated with fishponds.

Governance

The village lies within the

Richmond and Northallerton Richmond and Northallerton is a constituency of the House of Commons in the UK Parliament. Further to the completion of the 2023 review of Westminster constituencies, it was first contested at the 2024 general election, when it was won by Rishi ...

UK Parliament constituency. From 1974 to 2023 it was part of the district of Hambleton, it is now administered by the unitary

North Yorkshire Council North Yorkshire Council, known between 1974 and 2023 as North Yorkshire County Council, is the local authority for the non-metropolitan county of North Yorkshire, England. Since 2023 the council has been a unitary authority, being a county coun ...

Geography

The village lies very close to the

East Coast Main Line The East Coast Main Line (ECML) is a electrified railway between its northern terminus at and southern terminus at . The key towns and cities of , , , , and are on the line. The line is a key transport artery on the eastern side of Grea ...

and on a minor road that runs between East Cowton and the A167. The nearest settlements to Birkby are Little Smeaton, to the north-east, Hutton Bonville to the south-east and East Cowton to the north-west.

Religion

St Peter's Church, Birkby, dates from 1776. During some 19th-century renovation work the bases of two

Norman Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 9th and 10th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norma ...

columns were discovered under the floor of the

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the Choir (architecture), choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may termi ...

and others were found under the

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

. They had seemed to form part of a much earlier and more ornate building than the one that now occupies the site. Part of the shaft of a

Saxon The Saxons, sometimes called the Old Saxons or Continental Saxons, were a Germanic people of early medieval "Old" Saxony () which became a Carolingian " stem duchy" in 804, in what is now northern Germany. Many of their neighbours were, like th ...

cross was also unearthed, and is now built into the wall of the west end. Adjacent to the church is a

rectory A clergy house is the residence, or former residence, of one or more priests or ministers of a given religion, serving as both a home and a base for the occupant's ministry. Residences of this type can have a variety of names, such as manse, p ...

References