Letwell
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The following newspaper extract from the Leeds Mercury details Letwell as it was in 1900.
Letwell is first noticed in an account of services due by tenants of the Honor of Tickhill in the reign of Henry II. Thomas de Letwell was said to hold an acre of land here by serjeantry, and the service of receiving a brachet (or hound) at the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin (September 8th), and to have 31/2d. per day for keeping it through the winter.
The Letwell Manor, held for two centuries by the ancient family of Mauleverer, was sold by Sir Ralph Knight in 1662, who had established himself at Langold a few years previously. It was his descendant, John Gally Knight, the brother of the "Yorkshire Ruskin." and his wife, who made Letwell the admirable little village we see today.
According to the "Humour of Yorkshire Nomenclature," let loyalists go to Lealbolm, landlords to Letwell, and Litigants to Settle. Yet Letwell looks still, as in the days of John Gally Knight, like one of those villages specially cared for by a good squire, and attached to his park; so that common landlords might stand but a poor chance of getting any sort of footing in it.
And in its compactness the village makes a delightful little vignette, which might be called "far from the madding crowd." so retired is it from the workaday, knockabout world. The stranger is conscious of inquisitive faces peering out of tiny windows; of sheep-dogs that know the difference between native and stranger; of gray walls here and there clad with ivy; of a tiny post-office, where little or no business is ever done; of a bit of green which answers the purpose of a grasshopper's doorstep to three or four red old domiciles; of little pent-house porches of wood, where martins twitter; of the cottage of Moses Marsden, the village sexton; of yellow flowers one has never seen before growing up house sides and by palings; of a wain over whose sides and tail-board are piled garsel and pliant fence-laths, which the farm-man is raking down with a fork; of a private road at the bottom of the street, and a gate thrown across it, the road passing on into waving woods, and the only living thing visible a pig grubbing on the bank by the gate-house.
In the midst of a delightful daisied meadow studded with fine forest trees stands a picturesque octagon pigeon-cote of red brick. Pathways meander across fields, and in a large grange at the back of the village several rustic figures are moving.
A violet and speedwell lane leads up to the little Late Gothic Church of St. Peter hard by, built of blue-grey Limestone, with slates to match, and a little blue-grey tower verging on the quaint. The edifice was much injured by fire in December, 1867, but was carefully restored two years later by Sir T. W. White, Bart., of Wallingwells, and subsequently nearly every window was glazed with stained glass.
A more peaceful spot on a summer's day it would scarcely be possible to find in the Broad Acres. The Churchyard commands very extensive sylvan views. Laughton-en-le-Morthen spire - one of the finest in Yorkshire - pricks up like a needle above a belt of wood about three and a half miles to westward in a bee-line. All among the churchyard cowslips is this inscription to Henry Burghby, a cherub of nine years :-
Called hence by early doom.
Just to show how bright a flower
In Paradise would bloom.
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