Sunnyside Cottage, Carpenter's Cottage and Croft View

These three cottages face away from the adjacent road and what we see in this photograph is the rear elevation. Whether this arrangement dates back to their first  construction is not known but the proximity to passing vehicular traffic certainly makes it appropriate today.

The lighter area of colour of the stonework on the elevation we see immediately gives a clue to past building activity inasmuch as it draws attention to the apparent difference in age of the eastern and western portions. Furthermore, the western section is defined by a number of quoins or large pieces of stone forming its sides. In this same area we can also see the outline of some former opening albeit too low to form a doorway. The darker colour of the eastern portion may suggest that it is older than that on the right. On this portion also we signs of change where a window once existed.

Records in the West Riding Deeds Registry show that the site was acquired in 1843 by Joseph Scaife from Richard Pawson and John Dalby both of Killinghall when the property was described as being several dwellinghouses but “now converted into six dwellinghouses formerly occupied by James Barker, George Mawson, Sarah Hayes and Thomas Metcalf but now occupied by John Cooper, Mathew Jennings, Richard Barker, John Barker, Ann Steel and Dinah Barker”

A later mortgage document of 1889 shows the site to have been acquired  by Joseph Simpson a draper of Bradford who appears to have had numerous investments in property throughout the West Riding. His interest in the present properties was described in the mortgage as “Firstly five messuages or dwellinghouses or tenements now converted and occupied as four dwellinghouses and the outbuildings yards gardens orchards and other appurtenances to the same belonging situate and being in Hampsthwaite in the said county of York formerly the estate of Joseph Scaife deceased and formerly in the several occupations of Robert Jeffrey John Barker James Swale and Richard Barker but now or late of Robert Pullan and Asquith Huxley and the others unoccupied and Secondly all those two messuages or dwellinghouses recently occupied as one dwellinghouse with the outbuildings yards gardens orchards and other appurtenances to the same belonging situate and being in Hampsthwaite aforesaid late the estate of the said Joseph Scaife deceased formerly in the occupation of David Atkinson and his undertenants And Also All That building heretofore used as a stable workshop and gighouse situate in Hampsthwaite aforesaid and abutting on the north east side thereof to  the highway leading from Hampsthwaite to Darley aforesaid on or towards the south east by the highway leading from Hampsthwaite to Swincliffe on or towards the south west by the estate now or late of Richard Dearlove and on or towards the north west by the estate now or late of B J Wilson”.

In the photograph above can be seen (on the extreme right) part of the single storey buildings now forming Bower’s Funeral Undertaking. Does that represent the site and buildings of the stable etc. described in 1889?

By the time of the Land Tax survey in 1910 Joseph Simpson was still recorded as the freehold owner of five cottages and a lock-up shop the tenants being Moon, Ellis,, Brooke, Grainge, Haxby and Atkinson.

So we have a rather confusing history of building alterations and changes of tenants and that only at three specific points in a period of sixty eight years. At least it does provide firm evidence of the age of the buildings dating back before 1843. This places these modest cottages among the oldest surviving in Hampsthwaite.