Kirkdale, Lancashire

Description
Kirkdale, an ecclesiastical parish in the N. R. Yorkshire, on the river Bran, 1$ mile SW of Kirkby Moorside station on the N.E.R., and 8 miles W by N of Pickering. It contains the townships of Skiplam, Muscoates, Welburn, Wom-bleton, Beadlam, and Nawton, the last of which has a post and money order office (R.S.O.) under Helmsley; telegraph office, Helmsley. Population, 1036. The Bran disappears in a limestone tunnel near the church, but reappears before reaching the Dove. A famous fossil cave about 30 feet above the Bran's level, nearly 300 feet long, and at a short distance from the church, was discovered in 1821 at the working of a limestone quarry, and contained in a layer of mud, and in a comparatively fresh state, bones of the hyasna, lion, tiger, bear, wolf, fox, weasel, elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, horse, ox, deer, hare, rabbit, water-rat, mouse, raven, pigeon, lark, duck, and partridge. Dean. Bucklaud examined the cave soon after the discovery, wrote subsequently his " Reliquiae Diluvianse," and was of opinion that the cave had been a den of large beasts of prey at a time when the surrounding tract was inhabited by what are now inter-tropical animals. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of York; gross value, £252. Patron, the University of Oxford. The church includes some very early Norman work, has undergone many defacing alterations, consists of nave and chancel, with bell-turret, and contains monuments of the Gibsons, the Robinsons, and the Cayleys. The chancel was restored in 1881. A dial is over the S door, with a Saxon inscription, stating that the church was rebuilt in the time of Earl Tosti, which was about the year 1060, and that inscription, though it cannot refer to the church in its present form, undoubtedly refers to it in its original shape. There are Wesleyan and Primitive Methodist chapels at Nawton.