A particularly extensive and varied collection of parish records is held for the parish of Topcliffe (PR/TOP).  This collection includes parish registers of baptisms (1570-1949), marriages (1570-2007) and burials (1570-1957) (PR/TOP 1/1-24) for the church of St Columba, as well as examples of many of the classes of records that you might hope to find in a parish record collection but which, in many cases, do not always survive. 

BU01717A & BU08690 Two photographs of Topcliffe with the church in the distance by Bertram Unne, undated [mid-20th-century]

• Left: PR/TOP 1/1 Pages from the earliest parish register of baptisms, marriages and burials (1570-1697) recording baptisms in 1577 and burials in 1607/8
• Right: PR/TOP 1/4 Pages from the register of baptisms and burials (1769-1787) showing burials for 1784-1785

The Topcliffe records include a volume of churchwardens’ and overseers’ accounts dating from the mid seventeenth century, one of the earliest such volumes to be deposited at the Record Office (PR/TOP 2/1, 1651-1773).  Removal orders (PR/TOP 7/2, 1781-1836), settlement certificates (PR/TOP 7/3, 1751-1825), bastardy orders (PR/TOP 7/4, 1737-1834) and apprenticeship indentures (PR/TOP 7/5, 1748-1827), all much sought after by family historians, also survive from Topcliffe and from only a handful of other parishes within North Yorkshire.  As individual documents, they were far more vulnerable to destruction or disposal than more substantial volumes.

Left to right:

• PR/TOP 7/2 Removal order of John Benson, his wife and daughter, 9 June 1785
• PR/TOP 7/3/2 Settlement certificate of John White, his wife and son, 16 September 1751
• PR/TOP 7/3/4 Settlement certificate of Robert Frank, his wife and son, 17 October 1754

Left to right:

• PR/TOP 7/4/33 Bastardy order for the child of Jane Milburn and John Peacock, 31 August 1818
• PR/TOP 7/5/1 Apprenticeship indenture of Christopher Mokes alias Bell, 29 April 1748
• PR/TOP 7/5/2 Apprenticeship indenture of John Dawson, 1 July 1780

Other documents relating to the care of the poor of the parish concern the establishment of a workhouse towards the end of the eighteenth century (PR/TOP 2/3).  A public meeting was called by the churchwardens and overseers c.1782 (presumably following the passing of Gilbert’s Act, 1782), at which the majority of the inhabitants agreed “to establish a poorhouse and workhouse for lodging, keeping, maintaining and employing … poor persons“, although in effect it appears to have been repair of an existing house. 

PR/TOP 2/3 Overseers’ account book for Topcliffe (1765‑1815), including agreement to establish a poorhouse, May1782 (left) and a page recording overseers’ disbursements, April 1797 (right)

In 1789, an agreement was entered into by the churchwardens and overseers with John Wayne, then master of the poorhouse, for the care of “such poor as may from time to time be sent to the said poorhouse“.  The master was to provide “good and wholesome victualling” for them with milk and oatmeal or broth for breakfast and supper and a “flesh dinner” twice a week.  The other days, they were to have “something warm to dinner if possible especially in cold weather” and the master was to keep them “clean and decent by washing and mending for them that cannot do for themselves their shirts, shifts, stockings etc“.  He was allowed to employ them in any business he found them capable of, and to allow them 2d out of every 1s that they might earn.  Other similar agreements exist for 1806, 1819 and 1831 (PR/TOP 7/1).

Agreements between churchwardens and overseers and occupiers of the poorhouse for the care and management of inmates: with John Wayne, Master of the Poorhouse, 24 February 1789 (PR/TOP 7/1/1 – images 1-3) and with James Meynell, 4 Apr 1819 (PR/TOP 7/1/3 – images 4-6)

The rules of the workhouse, headed “Orders to be Observed by the Family“, show that work was to be from six in the morning to seven at night in the summer and from eight in the morning until five at night in the winter, with bed at nine and eight o’clock respectively.  The inmates were to obey all orders punctually and not to go out of the House without leave of the master and then for no more than one hour without giving a just reason.  All were to be back in the House by nine o’clock, unless visiting a relative.  Work on a Saturday was to end at four o’clock and all were to attend church on a Sunday (PR/TOP 7/10).

PR/TOP 7/10 Front and reverse of the rules of the workhouse, aka “Orders to be Observed by the Family”, undated

Topcliffe is also unusual in that many of the parish charities were overseen by a body of “feoffees” (PR/TOP 2/6; 4/4).  By the late seventeenth century, several sums of money had been bequeathed to the use of the poor of the parish without the donors nominating trustees to oversee the money’s distribution.  The task had therefore fallen, according to the Charity Commissioners Reports of 1837, to “some honest and able men who took upon them the order and disposition thereof“.  A decree of the Commissioners of Charitable Uses in 1674 put this on a more permanent basis by appointing Sir Metcalfe Robinson, the then vicar of Topcliffe, and eleven others, trustees for the charities, with the power to elect a new trustee or feoffee when any should die.  The feoffees were also responsible for electing the master of the Free Grammar School. 

PR/TOP 4/2/1-2 Later copy of a decree of the Commissioners of Charitable Uses originally made in 1674

A copy of the decree can be found with this collection (PR/TOP 4/2/1-2), as can an account book for the feoffees 1801-1857, which includes details of payments to the poor, the election of a master and the names of the free scholars elected (PR/TOP 2/6).  Also in relation to charities, the Topcliffe records include a list of charitable donations and bequests made between 1548 and 1612, elaborately written on a large sheet of parchment (PR/TOP 4/1/1).

PR/TOP 4/1/1 Extracts from a list of charitable donations and bequests made between 1548 and 1612

The survival of a series of tithe account books for Topcliffe is also unusual. The accounts date from 1706 to 1729 after which there is a long gap until 1771 and then another series of accounts from 1815 to 1821 (PR/TOP 6/1-20).  The  accounts give the names of those paying tithes in Topcliffe and other townships within the parish, the goods on which tithes were raised – hens, eggs, foals, pigs, geese, ducks, turkey, seeds, bees, dovecotes etc., and the amounts received.  With the absence of payments on corn, hay and wool, it seems that these were the accounts of the “small” tithes payable to the vicar.  The general custom was that the “great” tithes of corn, hay and wool were payable to the rector, in this case the Dean and Chapter of York, and the “small” tithes to the vicar. 

PR/TOP 6-1-1 Tithe disbursement book 1706-1715, open at pages for Topcliffe, 1706

Disputes over the payments often arose; pictured below are some eighteenth-century papers concerning a dispute with Robert Saville (PR/TOP 6/2).

PR/TOP 6/2 Papers relating to complaints made to the Justices of the Peace regarding Robert Saville, who refused to pay his small tithes in the parish of Topcliffe, 1737-1740s