Eleven Centuries of History in Just Eleven Paragraphs.

Probably the village's first appearance in the pages of history is in a record, dated 1030, of the Archbishop of York's possessions, when his court had jurisdiction over seven hides of land in Bishop Monkton. (A hide was an English unit of land measurement originally intended to represent the amount of land sufficient to support a household.) Monkton, as it was then, became Bishop Monkton to distinguish it from Nun Monkton and Moor Monkton, two nearby villages, now off the main A59 road into York. The village appears again in the Domesday Book in 1086 and seems to records a thriving little community of perhaps forty or fifty “souls, tilling its fields with its four ploughs” but still very much under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of York.

It is known that there was a mill in the village in the 12th century as the then Archbishop of York, Thurstan, who had endowed the monks of Fountains with land in 1132, made provision for the support of a nunnery in York with “five shillings of the tithe of the mill in Monkton”.

By the end of the 13th century, although it had neither church nor chapel, the village did have an official residence of the Archbishop of York, Monkton Hall, which has long since vanished, but would have been on the road to Boroughbridge. A Subsidy Tax of 1297, levied by the Crown on those whose goods mounted to at least nine shillings, showed that 18 Bishop Monkton householders were taxed, including three women who were probably widows. At least 16 of them owned a horse, considered then as a luxury item as a horse “eats more and is not favoured for the table”.

It was not until 1354, that the first religious building in the village was founded, on or near the site of the present day church, and known simply as St. Helen's Chapel. As the country recovered from the Black Death, it was evident that the village was growing relatively wealthy with quite an entrepreneurial spirit. Details of a Poll Tax of 1377 listed a raft of crafts and occupations (including tailoring) being carried out

During the 15th century, records show the little community still belonged, in the main, to the Archbishop of York, although several other names were starting to appear as being owners of tracts of land, including Sir Thomas Markenfield, (of Markenfield Hall) who, at one time, disputed the ownership of a rabbit warren in the village. By the final days of this century, nearly every villager held a patch of land to tend and was enjoying a measure of independence.

By the 16th century, the Reformation was gaining momentum with the result that the Archbishop's land was confiscated by the Crown, restored during the Catholic reign of Mary I and then taken away again when Protestant Elizabeth was on the throne. Two leading villagers took part in a 1569 religious uprising to resist the new Protestant faith which saw many of its leaders executed. The two Monktoners, however, were pardoned.

The 17th century brought the English Civil War and for the most part, the villagers were probably royalists. One of the prominent villagers died as a prisoner in York Castle in 1652, most likely after supporting Prince Rupert, nephew of the King, at the Battle of Marston Moor in 1644. The Hearth Tax of 1672 (two shillings per hearth) was raised against 52 houses with another seven omitted for poverty. In 1692 the London Gazette gave notice of two horse races to be run on Monkton Moor in late June with prize money of £40. 

Moving on into the next 100 year span, several of the fine brick houses seen in the village today were built, the population grew and farming was no longer providing the level of employment it had. Many small farmers turned to the textile trade with flax dressing dominating, although bleaching was also carried out. The Old Corn Mill (now housing) on Boroughbridge Road is thought to have been built as a flax mill while an earlier mill on the site also seems at one time to have dressed flax. By the turn of the 18th into the 19th century this was a paper mill.

In 1800, 87 families were crammed into 67 houses and in 1831 there was a population of 576. By 1841 there were 460 residents living in 110 homes, with 18 empty houses, due, probably, in part, to the mechanisation of the Industrial Revolution rendering hand labour for flax dressing no longer necessary. The opening of the Leeds-Thirsk railway in 1849, with a station at Wormald Green, expanded the area of work for many villagers. A village school was built in 1849 and in 1859 the Mechanics Institute was erected to create a centre for the community of Bishop Monkton. Responding to the blossoming of the Methodist movement, the foundation stone of the then “Wesleyan” Chapel was laid in 1874, while the new parish church was erected in 1878, showing no shortage of funds for the project as both a steeple and porch were included in the initial design.

The gossip mill in the village must have gone into overdrive at the start of the 20th century, when it was rumoured that King Edward VII was staying at Monkton Mains Farm, a former hunting lodge and once a centre for breeding horses for the London carriage trade. Far more seriously, 54 young men from the village went off to fight in the First World War, with several more serving their country from 1939. During the First World war shooting ranges were set up in some of the fields around the village and it was reported that at one occasion shots from the ranges were misfired, bullets hit the church and whistled past the ear of a cyclist entering the village. In the Second World War, the village had a vital role to play as wartime bridges were tested at a local site. During most of the first 75 years of the century, the paper mill was running for 24 hours a day and employed some 40 men, producing a top quality, highly polished card for industrial use that was exported all over the world. It was gradually squeezed out by larger competitors and finally closed in 1976. A new village school opened in 1971, adding more space/classrooms in the next 30 years.

In the current century the village continues to evolve and oversee more change. New houses have been built that welcome new families, while a new village hall was opened in 2007, funded by the sale of the Women's Institute Hall and the Mechanics Institute, augmented by an intensive fund raising campaign by villagers. The village thrives, boasts a plethora of clubs and societies, with something for everyone, as can be discovered by delving deeper into this website.