Sowood

Introduction and Summary

1300-1676 Controversy, The Dentons and The Black Death
Above the front door of Sowood Farm house is a datestone which carries the letters “FM” and the date 1689 but there is evidence¹ that the farmstead is much older even than this. If we are to believe this evidence then in the early 14th Century the farm was undergoing significant changes and not all were successful.

Between 1277 and 1709 the Manor of Sowood is variously referred to as Sowewode, Southwood Green, Soutwode and Southwode which means ‘south wood’ and derives from Old English Su and wudu. The Manor had been acquired, by purchase or grant, by Sir John de Horbury in the late 13th or the very early 14th century possibly at the time he acquired the Manor of Horbury in 1302. Some sources² believe that the 1689 house, which stands there today, was constructed on the site of a former manor house and that beams from that structure, which would have been of timber construction, were used in the building of the present farmhouse.

Sir John de Horbury’s tenure of the Manor was short lived and he died before 1304 when the Manor reverted to the Lord of the Manor of Wakefield, the 7th Earl de Warenne. Records show that the Manor appointed new staff to operate the farm and during the period 1304-1323 it seems likely that it became a mixed arable and livestock demesne³ farm of the Manor. During this period the farm was growing crops including oats and wheat and making hay and raising sheep and other animals for the Lord of the Manor’s table. This was the period of the Great Famine in England and not all went well at the Farm with evidence of malpractice and poor administration. By 1323 the Lord of the Manor of Wakefield had tired of Sowood and it was leased to Thomas Aleyn.

In 1336 Aleyn sold the Manor to William de Scargill who died of the plague in 1349 and by 1363 it was in the hands of William de Gargrave. Whilst war raged in 1462 in the War of The Roses at nearby Sandal Castle and again in the Civil War of 1642, little of local significance appears to have happened at Sowood for the next 200 years or so. Then, on 25th April 1585 at the Manor of Wakefield Tourn⁴ held at Wakefield. Christopher Denton did not make his part of Sowodd lone gate: amerced 4d.⁵ The “gate” may have been a structure but was more likely to be a path or roadway – a gateway – between the nearby towns of Horbury and Ossett. Even in the late 19th Century the Sowood Farmstead included land on the east and west of Denton Lane such that the road between Horbury and Ossett, Denton Lane, ran through it.

The 1585 reference places Christopher Denton at Sowood Farm in the late 16th Century and for the next 300 years or so if you wanted to go to the Farm from Horbury or from Ossett you would do so by taking the lane to Denton’s House. This lane subsequently became Denton Lane and was the street address of Sowood Farm well into the second half of the 19th century.

Sowood Farm would have earlier and later owners and occupiers than Christopher Denton but the significance of his lasting legacy in the name of the road which led to ‘Denton’s House’ can be found in 1593. In the late summer of this year Christopher Denton, seven of his family and five others in the locality fell victims to the Plague, The Black Death, and died within days of contracting the virulent disease.

All were buried in unconsecrated ground at Denton’s House in Sowood. One of those Plague victims was Joanye Brouke who was buried at Denton’s House on 3rd August 1593. 300 years later the Brook family, almost certainly descendents of Joanye’s family, became tenants, and later, owners of Sowood Farm.

No doubt it took some considerable time for the farm to recover from this episode in its history. The Denton family was decimated by the Plague and the farm almost certainly would have seen new owners and/or occupiers in the 17th century. It may however have been an unattractive prospect for potential purchasers or tenants and the farm may have fallen further into decline.

If, as some believe, a timber manor house once stood on the site then, if it survived into the 17th century, it may have been in poor condition. Even if this was not the case there would be a farmhouse here which may have been timber built and in poor condition due to its age and, perhaps, even derelict following the tragic events at the end of the 16th Century. It was time for a change for Sowood Farm.

1676-1797 The Marsdens – Re-building, Stability and Early Deaths
In 1676 Francis Marsden (1651-1718) of Middlecliffe, Thurlstone, near Penistone, in South Yorkshire acquired the copyhold interest in the messuage called Sowood, or Sowood House, from Thomas Purdue, gentleman, of Pudsey. The circumstances by which Purdue came to possess the farm is uncertain but in October 1670 he married Priscilla Rayner at Bradford Cathedral. Rayner is a long established Horbury family name and it may be that Priscilla came from this family and that the Rayners owned the Sowood Farm copyhold interest from sometime earlier in the 17th century. It is clear from the 1676 Wakefield Manor Court Roll⁶ that Thomas Purdue was not working the farm and associated land himself because the house was tenanted by Edmund Lord and Edward Haigh and the land was being worked by Edmund Lord or his assigns. The 1676 Court Roll is the earliest evidence to emerge of the property and land being called Sowood. During most of the 18th and the early part of the 19th Century the Marsden and Nettleton owners and occupiers were described as being of Storrs Hill.⁷

The 1672 Hearth Tax for Ossett records that Edmund Lord and Edward Haigh were charged tax on one “chimney” each suggesting that the dwelling, which preceded the existing farmhouse, may have been divided to provide accommodation for two families. In 1657 Edmund Lord of Sowood buried his son William at Horbury which suggests that he may have been at the Farm by 1657. His first child was born in May 1648 and whilst the record does not refer to him as being of Sowood it is possible that he lived at the Farm as early as 1647/48 which is a mere 50 years or so after the earlier Denton owners/occupiers died of the Black Death.

The 1676 Court Roll provides evidence that a dwelling stood at Sowood in that year and that it was known as Sowood House. By the early 1680s Francisci Marsden, his wife Ann (nee Tinker) and their three children –all baptised at Penistone – had journeyed the 20 miles from Penistone parish to Ossett. The family came to work Sowood Farm and its 30 acres – to the east, west, north and south of the farm – and they also rented “a farm under Storrs Hill” from the Beatson family. In total the holding was probably close to 80-100 acres. There is no record of the Marsden family in the locality before 1680 but the Beatsons are recorded in Dewsbury as early as 1563 and in Horbury in 1599 – shortly after the Sowood Plague which may be significant. It is also likely that the families knew one another since each had occupied New Hall Farm at Overton; the Marsdens between1615-1651 and the Beatsons during most of the 18th century.

Francisci and Ann Marsden had three more children in the 1680s, all baptised at Dewsbury, and by 1709 Francis is recorded as having a messuage and lands on Sowood Green.⁸ The messuage⁹ was Sowood Farm which Francis Marsden built, or rebuilt, in 1689 when he left his mark on the datestone, FM 1689, above the door so that all could see he had arrived and meant to stay.

Church records in the late 17th century record the 1696 death at Horbury of Richard Marsdin of Sawid greene who probably came to the locality with his brother Francisci in about 1680. In 1699 Francisci’s eldest daughter Mary married a wealthy local man, William Pollard of Hallcliffe and in 1704 at Dewsbury his next daughter Elizabetha married John Illingworth. The Marsdens were already marrying well. It is clear too that whilst Francis was baptised at Penistone he had close links with families in the Holme Valley and Wooldale areas around Holmfirth and Scholes. Francis Marsden died in 1718, aged about 67 and a widower since his wife’s death the year before. In accordance with the primogeniture custom of the time Sowood Farm and other copyhold landholdings were left to his son Johannes or John Marsden (1674- 1735), the eldest of his two sons.

John Marsden (1674-1735) married twice and had ten children and when he died, aged 61, in 1735 he left a Will which included an inventory of his belongings in his farm at Sowood. It is certain that he lived at Sowood since his Will also refers to the names of the fields adjacent to the Sowood Farmstead; names which were recorded in the 1676 Court Roll, and again, almost 170 years later, in the 1843 Ossett Tithe Award map. Most of these field names continued to be used to describe locations and ownership into the late 19th Century. John’s estates at Storrs Hill and at Sowood Farm (subject to a life interest in the east parlour of the house to his widow) were left to his eldest son, also called John Marsden (1704-1742).

John Marsden (1704-1742) was born at the farm but by the time he came of age or married he was living elsewhere, although nearby. His Will refers to him as John Marsden of Ossett Lights which suggests he lived part of his short life somewhere to the east of Sowood Farm. The 1790 Wakefield Manor Estate map shows a building closer to Horbury but still within Ossett parish. In 1731 John married his cousin Elizabeth Illingworth (the daughter of his aunt Elizabetha Marsden and John Illingworth – the gene pool was narrowing) By the time of his death in 1742, aged 38, he left a widow and four children, all boys, under the age of 11. Unsurprisingly, his young widow re-married in 1747.

His Will left a life interest in Sowood farm to his mother, who was living there in accordance with his father’s wishes. On her death the farm was to pass to his widow and on her death to his eldest son, Francis Marsden (1731-1765). Other land on Storrs Hill was left to his younger sons William, John and Thomas.

Francis Marsden (1731-1765) suffered a similar fate to his father and died young at the age of 34. He and his wife Hannah (nee Haigh and the daughter of Robert Haigh of Haggs Farm Ossett) had five children but two pre-deceased Francis leaving his widow Hannah with three children under the age of 8 at his death in 1742. By this time the significant landholdings established by his father, grandfather and great grandfather had been largely distributed to Francis’s siblings and uncles and he was left with Sowood Farm which he left to his eldest son also called Francis (1762-1792). His wife Hannah, however, had inherited land from her father, Robert Haigh of Haggs who was a wealthy man and son of the long serving Minister of Horbury Church, James Haigh and his wife Barbara (nee Leeke) who was also had extremely wealthy and influential origins. Francis had left in his Will a wish that his children be brought up at his home at Sowood and true to his wishes his widow Hannah remained at the farm until they were of age. In 1784 the 49 year old Widow Marsden married William Illingworth who was her late husband’s first cousin.

Francis Marsden (1762-1792) was the eldest son of the earlier Francis, but he was only three years of age when his father died. He was to inherit Sowood Farm, to which his mother had tenant rights for as long as she remained a widow, when he reached the age of majority in about 1784 – the year his mother re-married. In 1775 Widow [Hannah] Marsden is recorded as the owner of the Farm. Francis married in 1790 and his Will made provision that if his wife was with child then that child should inherit Sowood. It was not to be and consequently when Francis died in 1792, aged 29, Sowood was left to his only brother John Marsden, aged 27. Francis left other land to his sister Elizabeth.

John Marsden (1764-1797) was farming land at Southowram (left to him by his uncle William Marsden of Hallcliffe) at the time of his brother’s death and he returned home to Sowood to farm his inheritance. He was a bachelor and he too died young in 1797 aged only 33.He was the last of the male line of this branch of Marsdens and he left his Ossett copyhold and freehold estates to his sister Elizabeth Nettleton (nee Marsden) for life with the proviso that on her death the estates were to be divided equally between her children. This was to be the beginning of the end for the family’s ownership of Sowood Farm which now passed, by marriage, to the Nettleton family.

1798-1903 The Nettletons and John Scholefield Horbury Attorney – Troubled times and legal complications

Elizabeth Nettleton (nee Marsden 1757-1843) inherited a life interest in Sowood Farm on the death of her brother John Marsden in 1797. It is probable that it was at this time that she and her husband, John Nettleton, who she had married in 1783, moved into Sowood. At her death the Farm, and other land devised to her by John Marsden, was to pass to those of Elizabeth’s children who were alive at her death.. Elizabeth and John Nettleton had eight children (one died aged 6 months in 1791) and it was almost inevitable that the farm would have to be sold to fulfil John Marsden’s wishes.

In the 1821 Ossett Census John and Elizabeth Nettleton are recorded at Sowood suggesting John (aged 77) was still working the farm. Because the common law of the time meant that a wife’s rights and ownership of assets passed to the husband, most property records in the first half of the 19th century show John Nettleton of Storrs Hill, farmer, as owner and/or occupier of Sowood Farm. Even after his death in 1823 the Farm is recorded in property records as being in the hands of his Trustees/Exors (his son Joseph and his son in law Joseph Brook). In 1816, one of their children, Thomas, died leaving six children to share John Marsden’s Ossett estates on Elizabeth’s death.

John Nettleton of Storrs Hill died in 1823 making no reference to Sowood Farm in his Will. This was to be expected since he had no power over the distribution of the Farm under the terms of John Marsden’s bequest. Prior to his death however he and his children had made agreements with John Scholefield , a Horbury Attorney at Law, businessman and landowner. The detail is sketchy but it seems that the Nettleton children’s promised inheritance of Sowood, to which they would become entitled on their mother’s death, had been “bought” by John Scholefield. It seems likely that in 1823 Scholefield advanced the Nettleton children an amount equal to the value of Sowood Farm which allowed them to “cash” their promised inheritance earlier than the death of their mother. John Scholefield, effectively a mortgagee, secured these advances against Sowood.

Elizabeth Nettleton lived for another 20 years and died at Sowood Farm in 1843. By this time she had survived all but three of her eight children. The views of the surviving three children are unknown but the implications of their earlier decision to enter the 1823 agreement must have been clear. In 1823 it seems they had each mortgaged their one sixth share of Sowood Farm; had they awaited their mother’s death then the survivors would have had one third shares each because three of their siblings died between 1823 and 1843. Of course they could not have anticipated that their mother would live so long or that three of their siblings would die before she did. However their actions in 1823 had lost each of them one half of the value of their inheritance.

John Nettleton died in 1823 but his estate had not been settled by 1843 and there is evidence that the issue was still “live” in 1881 and maybe even in 1903. In between, in 1836, there had been a Chancery Court action by William Barber who had entered a land transaction with John Nettleton in 1815. All of John Nettleton’s children, those individuals who witnessed his 1822 Will and 1823 Codicil (which made changes to his Will to reflect the John Nettleton junior episode) his executors and also John Scholefield were named as defendants in the action. Those individuals who were not family were questioned as to the signatures on the Will and Codicil, the length of time they had known John senior and the state of his mind in 1823 when he died.

No evidence has emerged of the outcome of the 1836 Chancery case and it may be that it never came to Court but this and the 1823 Agreement may have caused the long delay in the closure of John Nettleton’s estate. It is possible that this affair which appears to have rumbled on for 80 years since the1823 Agreements with John Scholefield will forever remain a mystery but it can be no coincidence that in 1904 his grand daughter by marriage, Frances Battye, passed ownership of Sowood Farm to her son Captain Lionel Richard James Scholefield Battye – the great grandson of John Scholefield.
John Nettleton senior was buried on 20th October 1823 and Sowood House was advertised for sale shortly afterwards in the “Leeds Mercury.”

In 1841 John Nettleton’s widow Elizabeth continued to live at the Farm with the Census recording her living either in the house or in a cottage there with a ‘servant’, Sarah Nettleton who was probably Elizabeth’s grand daughter. There was however also a tenant farmer, John Hill, working the farm in 1841 and this arrangement involving tenant farmers continued for more than 100 years until 1948. In 1843, the year of Elizabeth’s death – the Ossett Tithe Award records the farm still in the ownership of John Nettleton’s Executors i.e. his son Joseph Nettleton and his son in law Joseph Brook¹⁰ who had married John Nettleton’s eldest daughter Elizabeth Nettleton in 1815.

Whether or not the Nettletons legally owned the farm between 1823 and 1903 is uncertain but most property records suggest that various Nettleton Executors did have a hold of some sort. In 1876 Frances Battye (John Scholefield’s grand daughter by marriage) declared a right of inheritance of 144 acres of West Riding real estate – including Sowood Farm.

It was certainly the case in 1841 that Elizabeth Nettleton was living at Sowood Farm but so too was farmer John Hill suggesting that there may have been at least two dwellings¹¹ located on the Farm at that time. A deed of 1847¹² indicates ‘all those messuages etc with the barn stables folds shops some of which have for some time past been converted into and are now occupied as cottages at Storrs Hill..now in the occupation of John Marsden, Job Scott, David Westerman and others….’ It is clear from other references in the Deed that this is Sowood Farm. It records that, in addition to the farmhouse, at least three cottages, some perhaps converted from farm buildings, stood here from some time earlier than 1847. It is possible that some of these dwellings or conversions were undertaken in the early part of the 19th Century by the ageing John Nettleton who needed to secure a steady income which required less effort than farming.

Between 1851 and 1891 the Farm was tenanted by working farmers. John Hill, who was tenant farmer in 1841 was still at Sowood in 1851, but by 1861 he was replaced by George Mitchell, Rag Merchant and farmer of 30 acres, and his wife Sarah (nee Marsden)¹³ who built a house later in the 1860’s (Rock Cottage – demolished in the late 1950’s/early 1960’s) on the south side of Sowood Bend opposite Sowood Farm.

In 1871 and 1881 the tenant farmer was William Crowther also working 30 acres and, the Nettletons, in the form of J. Nettleton’s Trustees, were recorded in the 1881 Poor Law Assessment record as the owners of Sowood Farm and William Crowther & his under tenants were the occupiers. That record shows the Sowood land and the house, kitchen, barn, stable/mistal, old cottage used as mistal, hen place, cart shed .In addition there are five cottages also said to be owned by the Nettleton Trustees and occupied by named tenants or, perhaps, under tenants. In 1871 there are 35 people in six families living in dwellings, probably including converted agricultural buildings, at Sowood Farm. By this time Sowood Farm was a busy community.

It is difficult to reconcile¹⁴ the 1881 Poor Law Assessment reference to ownership by the Nettletons with an 1876 indenture between Frances Battye, [of 66 Queens Gardens Hyde Park London] and the Duke of Leeds, Lord of the Manor of Wakefield which confirms that Frances Battye (nee Bibby) has inherited 144 acres of copyhold estate in Yorkshire including 16 acres at Sowood Farm. It seems that the ownership was still in dispute and as we have seen this conflict must hark back to the 1815 and 1820’s Agreements and the 1836 Chancery case. .

The description in the 1876 Deed refers to ‘two cottages & gardens Sowood House & Farm buildings, three cottages adjoining, Great Ox Close, Little Ox Close, The Ing, Calf Croft…..’ All of the above buildings & dwellings are occupied by William Crowther & his under tenants. These are the field names recorded on the 1843 Tithe Award and those same field names are referred to in John Marsden’s Will in 1735. Ox Close and the Ing are mentioned in the 1676 Wakefield Court Roll when Francis Marsden first acquired the copyhold interest in Sowood farm.

But how was it that Frances Battye (nee Bibby) daughter of James Jenkinson Bibby of Hardwicke Grange Shropshire, High Sheriff of Shropshire and founder of the Bibby Shipping Line came to be owner of 15 acres of land and a farm at Sowood in Ossett? In 1866 Frances Bibby married Richard Battye JP and Attorney at Law of Skelton Hall and Crosland Grange Yorkshire. Richard was the son of William Walker Battye and Margaret Scholefield who was the daughter of John Scholefield of Horbury. Richard Battye was grandson to John Scholefield.

John Scholefield died in 1850 leaving the bulk of his estate including Sowood Farm, to his daughter Margaret and her heirs. She died at Skelton Hall York in August 1869 surviving, by only five months, her husband William Walker Battye who died in March 1869.

Their estates were left in large part to her eldest son Richard Battye, Barrister at Law, of Queens Gardens London, the husband of Frances Battye. He died at Hardwicke Grange, the home of his in laws, “the result of an accident” in 1873 and Frances inherited his estate, including Sowood Farm, upon his death. Thus Frances Battye (nee Bibby) heiress to part of her father’s estate (valued at £1.773m at his death in 1893) was also to inherit a substantial part of John Scholefield’s estate as a result of the deaths of her in laws and her husband within a four year period 1869-1873. She thus became the owner of large tracts of land and property including land at Horbury and Sowood Farm.

By the time of his death in 1850 John Scholefield was the second largest owner of land in Horbury (the largest owner being John Carr). In 1873 the Return of Owners of Land in Yorkshire record the late Richard Battye and his late father William Walker Battye as owners of 331 acres of Yorkshire land, including Sowood. By 1900 Frances Battye was one of the largest owners of land in Horbury and her ownerships included Hallcroft, Horbury Hall and Nether Hall later to be The Shepherd’s Arms Public House.

Frances Battye continued to rent Sowood to tenant farmers and by 1891 John Tasker was farming Sowood In 1896 Fredrick Brook (1864-1936), the grandson of Joseph Brook and his wife Elizabeth (nee Nettleton), had become the tenant farmer of Sowood Farm.. His grandfather, Joseph Brook, was a Trustee of John Nettleton’s estate in 1823 and his wife was John Nettleton’s daughter. Joseph would have known Sowood farm which may have been the reason for him leaving his farming at Gawthorpe in the 1820’s to assist his aged father in law to farm at Sowood. Sowood Farm was no stranger to the Brooks and Fredrick’s tenancy was to begin a long occupation by the Brook family which lasts until today (2013).

In 1904 shortly after Fredrick’s arrival there was to be a change of ownership at Sowood Farm. During their short marriage Richard Battye and his wife Frances (nee Bibby) of Skelton Hall and Crosland Manor Yorkshire had children, the eldest was the only son born in 1867 and named Lionel Richard James Scholefield Battye . He was educated at Eton and became a Captain in the 13th Royal Hussars. In May 1904¹⁵ Captain Battye of Cadogan Square Kensington was party to a Deed with his mother Francis whereby he acquired several of her land and property holdings in Horbury and Ossett. Included in the transfer was ‘…house, barn, mistall, two cottages and 16 acres of land in the occupation of Fredrick Brook.’

In the early 1900’s the Wakefield & District Light Railway Company(WDLRC) had begun land acquisitions and work to develop a tram, or light rail, link from Ossett to Wakefield Agbrigg via Horbury. The line, which required the acquisition of a strip of frontage land to be purchased¹⁶ from Frances Battye to widen the road at Sowood, opened in August 1905 and closed in July 1932. Until July 2009 the three-line tram shed depot stood opposite Sowood Farm, but today the only legacy of tram journeys past Sowood Farm is the collapsed wall, built by the WDLRC in 1904, at the roadside south frontage of the farmhouse. The road level at Sowood is much higher than the 17th and 18th Century buildings which it skirts, partly as a result of the foundations for the laying of the tram tracks in the early 20th Century.

Above: The above photograph from about 1910 shows a workman on the roadside outside Sowood Farm with an Ossett – Horbury – Agbrigg tramcar in the distance.. It appears also that a horse and cart, or trap, is making its way towards the Farm. The 26ft high sectional steel poles carrying the overhead electric lines for the tramcars can be clearly seen on the south side of Sowood Lane.

1904-2012 Captain Battye and the Brook family
The Brook and Battye families were to continue their owner/occupier relationship well into the mid 20th Century. In 1910 the Inland Revenue [‘Domesday’] Valuation shows LRJS Battye as owner and Fred Brook as tenant. The record shows Milk Farm known as Sowood Farm “….there is a good building frontage on two sides. Trams pass to and from Wakefield frequently.” Fred Brook is also shown as owner and occupier of a “wood mistal” at the farm. He is there too in 1911 when the Census records Fredrick Brook, cattle dealer and farmer living in the six roomed Sowood Farm.

Above: Bennett Brook at Sowood Farm in the early 1900s.

Fredrick Brook died on 4th March1936 and the farm tenancy was taken over by his only son Bennett Brook (1891-1980). Bennett’s farm account book from this time has survived and the first entry is dated 4th March 1936. It was during Bennett’s tenure that the Farm was purchased by the Brook family. Captain Battye died, a bachelor without issue, in May 1947 and his executors began to sell his land holdings, including Sowood Farm. On 1st October 1948 Bennett purchased “…all that farmhouse cottage (formerly two cottages but some time ago converted into one) & farm buildings together with land thereto belonging known as Sowood Farm situated on Sowood Road formerly in the occupation of Fredrick Brook but now of the purchaser being formerly described as 16 acres but the whole by recent admeasurement having been found to contain 15 acres 1rood 35 perches….”

Except for a break in 1917 – 18 whilst Bennett was serving with the Army on the Western Front as a Machine Gunner¹⁷, he had worked the farm from being a young man, assisting his father on the land and with the stock. Bennett’s widowed mother, Lilly continued to live at Sowood Farm after her husband, Fred’s death in 1936 but whilst Bennett took over the running of the Farm he lived with his family on the other side of Sowood Bend at the 1860’s built Rock Cottage which he rented. Lilly Brook died at Sowood Farm on 29 September 1957 and shortly afterwards Bennett Brook moved to Manor House¹⁸ on Manor Lane. In the meantime, Bennett’s only son, David Brook (1928 – 2002) had married Dorothy Ingham in 1951 and they began their married life at Barmby Fold, before moving to Sowood Farm in 1957 following Lilly Brook’s death. Their two children Christine and Peter were born in the mid/late 1950s.

In the 1980s David and Dorothy and Brook began to contemplate improvements to the 17th Century working farmhouse at Sowood and in 1981 they were visited by the National Commission of Historic Monuments. This led, in 1988, to the farmhouse being Grade II Listed and it remains today the only Listed Building in Ossett, which is still used as a dwelling. But even the 1988 listing documentation left unanswered questions about the identity of the builder of the farmhouse and the building itself. That documentation includes reference to the lintel/datestone above the south facing front door of the Farmhouse which bear the initials ‘FM’ and the date ‘1689’ Between these two markings there is barely legible lettering which the listing has variously reported as being the word ‘flackender’ and ‘F Mackender’ .The listing attributes the building of the 1689 Farmhouse to a person of the same name, stating “the present house built in 1689 by F Mackender incorporates a timber partition between the body of the house and the outshut.”

Had the listing sources called upon the Horbury local historian, Ken Bartlett, he would have told them about ‘The Marsden family…….from Ossett, mainly from Sowood Farm, just over the Ossett Horbury boundary. The lintel over the front doorway has the initials of the Marsden family and a late seventeenth Century date’ Ken Bartlett, of course, was correct and this research has taken his work a step or two further and identified the builder as Francis Marsden. As for the barely legible lettering on the lintel above the doorway it reads neither flackender nor Mackender but Marsden.

The listing also states, categorically, that ‘work has revealed substantial rafters which probably came from the buildings of the Medieval manorial centre which is known to have existed on the site from at least 1302’

Whilst it may be the case that a manorial centre existed at Sowood Farm it is by no means certain. The argument in favour of Sowood Farm being the site of an earlier manor is based upon 14th century Court Rolls which refer to farming activity at Sowood but this is not evidence that this activity took place at the site of the modern day Sowood Farm. Whilst this may be the case, other evidence suggests that the Manor may have been situated elsewhere in Sowood.

This evidence¹⁹ suggests Sowood manor may have been situated further west, possibly with a manor house, on Storrs Hill Road near Sowood Green. A dwelling known in 1850 as the “Manor House” built in 1684 and demolished in 1958/59 stood on a lane leading westward from Storrs Hill Road – the lane now leads to Ossett Academy. The “Manor House” was built on land which was owned by Edward Oates in 1775 and his father, William Oates, was recorded in 1709 as the Lord of the Manor of South wood green. The Oates ownership in this location stretched to 121 acres and in 1349 the Manor was described as a messuage and carucate of land which is generally taken to be about 120 acres.

Previously unknown evidence has now been discovered that, in 1676, the present day Sowood Farm was the site of a dwelling – probably a farm, called Sowood House. This substantiates the contention that an earlier building stood here before the present farmhouse was built or rebuilt in 1689. This earlier building may also have had a long history and may have included an earlier Manor House. Whilst it is not claimed that the Storrs Hill Road Manor House and the associated Oates 120 acres landholding was the site of Sowood Manor and House its credentials are at least as worthy of further research and consideration as the Sowood Farm site.

In 2012 Sowood Farm is owned and run by Dorothy Brook and her children Peter Brook and Christine Burnell (nee Brook). Since 1689 the Farm has been owned by the Marsden family who built it, the Nettletons who married into the Marsden family, the Scholefields and the Battyes who acquired it by default and the Brooks who tenanted and subsequently purchased it. As it turns out, they brought it back to the family who built it.
Many interesting facts have emerged during the course of the research but two family connections are particularly fascinating.

In 1593 Joanye Brouke died of the plague and was buried at Denton’s House or Sowood Farm. The present Brook family are almost certainly 9th generation descendants of Joanye Brouke’s family. Moreover the study has revealed a relationship between today’s owners and the 1689 builder which was unknown to the current owners of the Farm, the Brook family. The Farm was built in 1689 by Francis Marsden and one of his descendants married a Nettleton who had a daughter who married a Brook. These happy events led to Peter Brook and his sister Christine being related to Francis. In 2012 Peter and Christine are working the Farm which 324 years ago was built and worked by their 8x Great Grandfather Francis Marsden.

References:

1. West Yorkshire: an Archaeological Survey to A.D 1500 M.L. Faull & S.A. Moorhouse 1981 page 471.
2. Ibid. There is another contender for the location of an earlier Manor House. This was built on Storrs Hill Road in 1684 and demolished in 1959. See “Sowood Manor A collection of historical references” (Alan Howe 2013.)
3. Demesne – operated by the Lord of the Manor for his own use.
4. Tourn Local criminal court presided over by the sherriff.
5. Christopher Denton did not repair his section of Sowood Lane roadway to Horbury/Ossett & was fined 4d.
6. The entry refers to a “messuage” in the singular suggesting it was a single dwelling – perhaps divided?
7. This is likely to be because the majority of the land worked from the Farm was situated at Storrs Hill.
8. 1709 Wakefield Manor Book.
9. Messuage – Plot of land usually containing a dwelling.
10. Joseph Brook married Elizabeth Nettleton in 1815. She was the eldest daughter of John Nettleton and his wife Elizabeth (nee Marsden). By marriage the Brook family became related to the Marsdens, the builders of Sowood Farm.
11. There is also evidence however that the farmhouse was divided to provide accommodation for two families.
12. West Yorkshire Archives Service Deeds Registry. Deed reference 1847 QE 333 340.
13. Sarah Marsden was the 4 x great grand daughter of Francis Marsden (1651-1718).
14. It may be that the Scholefield Agreements allowed time for the Nettleton children to redeem the mortgages and that this period had not yet elapsed and/or the litigation of the early 1800’s remained unresolved. There is no doubt however that the Battye descendants of John Scholefield owned the Farm, or the rights to the Farm and this was borne out in 1904.
15. In 1903 the estate of John Nettleton (died 1867) and his sister Harriet (died 1865) was proved. John was the grandson of John Nettleton (died 1823). Was it coincidence that a year later the Farm passed by Deed from Frances Battye to her son? Perhaps there was some form of covenant on the land which expired after 80 years.
16. West Yorkshire Archives Service Deeds Registry Deed reference 30 942 427.
17. Bennett’s War Diary 1918 has survived & an extract is in the full “History of Sowood Farm” at https://ossettheritage.co.uk/links/#section-2
18. Manor House, Manor Lane, Ossett, Mark Wilby (1827-1912) [Alan Howe 2009] https://ossettheritage.co.uk/links/#section-2
19. See Sowood Manor – A Collection of Historical notes [Alan Howe 2013] https://ossettheritage.co.uk/links/#section-2