Historical Timeline

Anglo Saxon carving on lintel of the south

Anglo Saxon origins?

It is thought that there was an existing church at Coverham before the present building was erected around 1200 AD (CE). An Anglo-Saxon cross now serving as a lintel over the main door may have belonged to this early building.

Interior showing the arches supporting the south aisle (photograph courtesy of Chris Hogg)

Thirteenth and Fourteenth centuries - the medieval Church

A charter of Henry II confirms that Waleran, Lord of Coverham, donated the Church at Coverham and other lands to an order of canons founded by Helewise, his mother, in 1190. The canons moved to Coverham in the early thirteenth century (possibly 1212) and established the Abbey here. The ministry of the church and the spiritual welfare of the inhabitants of the dale were looked after by the Abbot and his canons. The chancel and nave are the earliest parts of the present church and these date from this period.

1320

The south aisle was added. The octagonal piers built to support the arches of the south aisle can still be admired today.

Circa 1478

Some of the church was rebuilt by the Abbot of Coverham Abbey. The window frame from the east wall of the south aisle dates from this period.

Henry VIII by Holbein the Younger, Wikimedia Commons

The Reformation

In the 1530s, Henry VIII sought the dissolution of the Abbey as part of the Reformation of the Church in England.

The Pilgrimage of Grace, 1536. Shaw, Fred Kirk, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

October 1536

Coverham briefly became involved in national events as it was one of the gathering places for the Pilgrimage of Grace, a popular uprising that began in Yorkshire in October 1536. The rebels demanded that the King reinstate the Catholic Church and reduce taxes. They marched south, capturing Hull and York, but were ultimately unsuccessful. Coverham Abbey, like many other monasteries across the country, was destroyed (its ruins were incorporated into a private residence during the 18th century). The church was ‘sold’ by the Crown to absentee lay rectors who received tithes from the parishioners and therefore often saw the Church as purely a source of income. Local curates were employed to perform parish duties, rather than a resident vicar. The first perpetual curate was Robert Kendall who seems to have been a former canon at the abbey.

Late 1500

The lower part of the tower was erected. The porch on the south side also dates from the late sixteenth century.

The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

The tower was built up to its present height, with its decorative crenelated parapet. In 1632 a treble bell by William Oldfield of Bradford was fitted in the tower. The bell is inscribed ‘IESUS BE OUR SPED 1632’. a second and a tenor bell were added in 1777, made by Pack and Chapman of Whitechapel.

Early 1700s

The north wall of the nave was demolished and rebuilt, thereby narrowing the nave. Some alterations were made to the chancel arch.

1789

The ‘ancient oaken stalls’ were replaced with twenty-two new pews. They would have been box pews, paid for by wealthier parishioners and regarded as private property. The poor would have to stand at the back. The end of the eighteenth century bought a period of greater stability and civility to the parish. The Reverend James Law became assistant curate in 1786 and was officially licensed as such in 1791. He remained in post until 1826. In 1811, he reported to the bishop that he held services every Sunday morning and afternoon, alternately at Coverham and Horsehouse; preaching at each service and supplementing his stipend with some teaching.

1836 Sketch of the Church© Lambeth Palace

The Nineteenth Century

Between 1817 and 1826, extensive repairs were made to the chancel, a new ‘underdrawn’ roof was built, and the floor was flagged. The tower was repaired and the church roof re-slated. 1836 - The church moved from the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Chester to the newly created Diocese of Ripon. A sketch was made of the church when it was inspected and found to be ‘in bad repair, the walls green with damp’. The centuries of perpetual curacy and underinvestment had left the fabric of the building in poor condition.

Layout of Holy Trinity

1840-1850

Through the nineteenth century, the population of Coverdale swelled with quarrymen, coalminers and lead-miners, as well as agricultural workers. Attendance at services was variable: according to the Bishop's register for 1844, in “the depth of winter” the congregation was “perhaps ten”, sometimes well under that; but during fairer weather attendance could rise to over two hundred. The rising population brought opportunities for renovation. The walls of the chancel were re-built, and a new sloping roof replaced the ‘ancient flat roof’. A burial vault for the Dawson-Duffield family was built and the family installed stained glass into a number of windows.

1860-1870

The most substantial alterations were made during the tenure of the Reverend Richard Frankland Dent. Arriving at Holy Trinity in 1867 when he was only twenty-six, he established a large committee to carry through refurbishments. £2350 was raised and paid for the construction of a new chancel arch, rebuilding of the north wall of the nave and a new roof with pitch pine rafters. Plans drawn by the architect Christopher G Wray were followed by the builders, Jones and Company of Leyburn. A wooden gallery was taken out; an organ chamber added; and the Georgian box pews replaced with open stalls. The woodwork inside the church today dates from this time - as does most of the stained glass and the tiles. The font of Caen stone was presented by the builders. Sadly, Reverend Dent died at a relatively young age. His family burial plot lies below the east wall of the church.

The Twentieth Century

The beginning of the twentieth century saw rural industries and agriculture become severely depressed, and the population of the parish began to decline.

In 1930, a roll of honour naming the men of Coverham Parish who served in WWI was attached to the north wall of the nave. The First World War monument lists sixty-two names from this small community, with many from the same families: there are six named Walls, five Watsons, five Utleys and four Osbornes. It seems that Coverdale was fortunate, and all the young men named on this list returned from the war. Eight men from Carlton Highdale (west of Carlton) are not included in the roll and, of these, George Clarke of Horsehouse was killed in action in 1918.

Mid 20th Century

Holy Trinity kept going with a much smaller congregation through the First and Second World Wars. Severe winters and damage to the heating system led to problems with damp. The nave walls were replastered and the tiles on the floor of the sanctuary replaced with concrete slabs.

In 1987, the church was given into the keeping of the Redundant Churches Commission - now the Churches Conservation Trust. The Church still holds occasional services and is available for baptisms and funerals. Weddings are by special licence.

The Churchyard

“the hermit, who would require his grave to be as quiet as his cell, would choose this churchyard to be his burial place.” -The Reverend John Pickford, A Week in the Yorkshire Dales, 1882

The earliest graves lie immediately around and to the south of the church building. A lower part of the original churchyard extends below the wooden fence to the south, alongside the footpath which would have been the main entrance way to the church in previous centuries. This part of the old graveyard drops so steeply that the church cannot be seen and, when the mill was in operation, the sound of water would have made it impossible to hear the bells.

During the nineteenth century, the churchyard was extended to the west. A further field was added in the twentieth century, in which burials still take place.

The parish of Coverham and the Local Area

The word Cover (pronounced to rhyme with hover) derives from the ancient Celtic language of the Britons and means ‘the brook in the deep valley’. The River Cover gives its name to the dale itself and also to the settlement of Coverham and its parish.

The old parish of Coverham was extensive, incorporating the townships of Agglethorpe with Coverham, Melmerby, Carlton Town, Caldbergh with East Scrafton, West Scrafton and Carlton High Dale (including the village of Horsehouse and hamlets of Arkleside, Braidley, Coverhead, Fleensop, Gammersgill, Hindlethwaite, Swineside, West Close and Woodale). After Holy Trinity stopped holding regular services in the 1980s, these were merged into the even larger parish of Middleham with Coverdale, East Witton, and Thornton Steward. Regular worship continues in the dale at St Botolph Church in Horsehouse.

Coverham itself is a quiet and scattered hamlet now but would have been a thriving village during medieval times when the Abbey was in operation. On top of their religious duties, the white-robed canons farmed large flocks of sheep and maintained a guest house as a resting place for travellers passing through Coverdale on one of the main routes between Yorkshire and Lancashire. The Abbey supported two mills and employed women for the laundry as well as local men to service a bakehouse, brewery, kitchens, and fishponds (probably located in the fields on the other side of the main road from this lychgate). Coverham Bridge, with its pointed arch, crosses the river below the church. It is now part of the back road up the dale to Caldbergh and West Scrafton, but dates from the fourteenth century and was originally built to allow the monks to reach their farms and granges more easily.

Image by Joe Regan / Coverham Bridge / CC BY-SA 2.0

From the late eighteenth century, racehorse training has been an important industry in this lower part of Coverdale. A number of stables were established on the north side of the dale around Coverham. One of the most famous jockeys and trainers in the 19^th century was John Howe Osborne Jr. (1833-1922) who won multiple British classics including the Derby and the St Leger on his horses Pretender and Apology. Osborne’s family owned stables at nearby Ashgill and later Brecongill. He was a stalwart churchgoer, turning out at Holy Trinity every Sunday that he was able and, at least once, was the only member of the congregation.

Image: John Howe Osborne ('Men of the Day. No. 391. "Johnny."')

by Liborio Prosperi ('Lib'), published in Vanity Fair 10 December 1887
NPG D44363 © National Portrait Gallery, London

John Howe Osborne ('Men of the Day. No. 391. "Johnny."') by Liborio Prosperi ('Lib'), published in Vanity Fair 10 December 1887 NPG D44363 © National Portrait Gallery, London

A seventeenth century public house on Coverham Lane was renamed the 'Lady Bab' in the early nineteenth century after a successful racehorse that had been trained in the area. The site of the Lady Bab Inn was sold in 1912 to Alfred Rowntree, a Quaker related to the confectioners of York, who opened a cheese factory there. Milk was delivered from local farms twice a day and used to make a cheese called Coverdale, as well as traditional ripened, blue-veined Wensleydale. This speciality cheese was much sought after: it was sold at Fortnum and Masons and was supplied to Buckingham Palace, where the Blue Wensleydale was reported to be a favourite of George V. The dairy later became part of the Unigate group but closed in the 1990s.

Image: Workers at the Coverham Dairy

Points of interest in the churchyard

Lychgate: the word lych comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for a corpse and these are roofed gateways to a churchyard, traditionally used for sheltering a coffin until the vicar arrives. This gate was erected in1888, in memory of John Topham of Middleham House and with the inscription “I was glad when they said unto me, I will go into the House of the Lord” (Psalm 122:1). Opening onto Coverham Lane, it has become the main entrance to the church. The paving slabs that run from the gate and come to a dead end at the back wall of the churchyard, cover a stream that once fed the race, providing the power for Coverham High Mill.

The Dawson Memorial: this strikingly sentimental Victorian statue of Charity and her Children on top of a cairn, which stands near the west wall of the tower, dates from around 1880. Thomas Dawson came from a famous family of Newmarket trainers and established stables at Brecongill in 1838. In 1861 Brecongill was taken over by John Howe Osborne and Dawson moved to the larger Tupgill Park (now the site of the Forbidden Corner visitor attraction). Each of the stones on the cairn is carved with the name of a member of the Dawson family.

Further connections to horseracing can be found on the headstones themselves, for instance beside the grass path towards the church, there is a lovely relief carving of a horse on the elaborate gravestone of Benjamin Thompson, a 19-year-old jockey who died in 1876. Next to this is the headstone of James Fieldhouse, 15, who "was killed by lightning" on June 20, 1868, as he was riding out from Thomas Dawson’s Tupgill stables on Rococo, a horse which had won the 1866 Northumberland Plate, "the Pitmen's Derby". The horse also died when the lightning struck.

Points of interest inside the Church

Anglo-Saxon remains. As well as the carved stone used as a lintel over the south doorway into the church, there is also part of a re-used grave slab with a floriated cross on the east jamb of the doorway. It may be that these stones were brought from elsewhere: however, if they were in situ, it supports the theory that this has long been a religious site and it is possible that there was an earlier church building before the Abbey or Holy Trinity were built.

14^th century piscina: a sink for washing the communion vessels is often found in the sanctuary area of medieval churches. There are two piscinas in the church: a low, plain one in the south aisle of the chance and a more elaborate one in the high altar area. This dates from the fourteenth century and has the letters TP carved in its spandrels, which may stand for Thomas Piggott of Melmerby.

Stained glass: the only remaining medieval glass can be found in the heraldic sub-lights of the two windows on the south wall of the nave, which are probably contemporary with the windows themselves and so date from circa 1320.

Most of the stained glass in Holy Trinity dates from the nineteenth century and commemorates families connected to the dale, for example the depictions of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, Christ holding a Chalice, Christ carrying the Cross in the east window date from 1878 were commissioned in memory of the Topham family. The stone arch and tracery of the window frame is original and the interlacing lines and circles creating a net-like pattern was a style that was much used during the mid-fourteenth century.

The Coverdale window on the west wall at the back of the church similarly dates from 1878 and contains shields of arms of local families. The stain glass used in this window was originally inserted in 1854/5 into the east chancel window, after a subscription organised by Reverend Count Roger Dawson Dawson-Duffield. The glass was moved to the west window of the south isle during the 1878 refurbishment. The centre light in the Coverdale window includes the arms of the see of Exeter impaled with the personal arms of Miles Coverdale, who was briefly Bishop of Exeter and completed the first full English translation of the Bible in 1535. Local legend has it that he was born in Coverdale, possibly at Caldbergh Hall. Sixteenth century sources cite his birthplace as Yorkshire and recent research suggests that he might have been born in York, but sadly there is no evidence of his connection to the dale with which he shares his name.

The Arts and Crafts-style tiles are described by Nicholas Pevsner as “very Victorian” in his book about the Churches of North Yorkshire. The tiles behind the altar are by Minton (Staffordshire) and were placed there by Christopher Other in memory of the Lister family who lived at Coverham Abbey House in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Majolica tiles in the reredos of the south aisle are by Maw and Co. and were presented by Thomas Topham.

The Tophams, one of the families celebrated in the nineteenth century fitting of the church, have descendants that still live locally. This is also true of the headstones in the churchyard: many of the surnames on these can still be found amongst present inhabitants of the dale.

Acknowledgements

Sources for the information used here include:

‘History and Survey of Holy Trinity Church Coverham’ by Middleham and Dales Local History Group, 2009

Joynes, N.E. (2006) PhD Thesis: ‘The History of Carlton in Coverdale’, Leeds University The history of Carlton in Coverdale, 1086-1910 - White Rose eTheses Online

Slater, V. (2021) “A Coverdale Clergyman” The Life, Family and Times of the Reverend James Law, 1755 – 1831

The Churches Conservation Trust at Holy Trinity Church, Coverham, North Yorkshire | The Churches Conservation Trust (visitchurches.org.uk)

Special thanks are due to:

The Middleham and Dales local History Group: in particular, the research of the late Isobel Jenkins and Val Slater, whose help in compiling this webpage was invaluable.

Chris Hogg, Val Slater and Jonathan Watkins for use of photographs

Webpage authored by Susie Wood

If you are researching your family history and have links to Coverdale, there is a wealth of information and a HUGE index of people that lived in the Dale to be found on coverdalehistory.simdif.com