OLD KIRK STILE- A visit recorded on July 30^th 1887

Few are surely unacquainted with the renowned hostelries from which Chaucer’s pilgrims set out on their journeys to Canterbury, and still fewer have failed to receive the offers of entertainment, for man and beast, that these inns afford.

Who has not seen the jolly hostess, the obsequious waiters, the bouncing chambermaids, the holster, who takes the travellers nag, and above all the garrulous host who, when invited, gives his company to his guests, tells them the news, and recounts the many amusing or grave incidents which have occurred since he or his forefathers first took possession of the building. English inns, especially those of Yorkshire, have not yet lost their reputation for comfort and the attention paid to guests and among the many that I know in this district none have more charms for me than the Old Kirk Stile, of Kirkheaton. You no sooner enter the low doorway of this inn and turn into its cosy bar, than at once feel that it must have been built the greater part of 2 centuries. There is an air of solid comfort about it that cheers you and makes you wish there were more like it. The cheery host comes and places before you a glass of clear nut-brown ale, and you soon find that he is even more ready to answer questions than you are to ask them. He has been the landlord of the place for 14 years, and can call to mind a number of his jovial predecessors. He candidly admits that he does not know how long the old inn has been built, but he says it has been handed down to him more as a fact than as a legend, that it is supposed that a number of monks lived at this place and that the Beaumont chapel was a chapel of ease for the Beaumont family. He tells you at that time there were few houses near, and that trees, which extended without a break to Sherwood Forest, surrounded the place. He takes you round his rooms and points out that in the tap room the capacious fire-place 4 feet wide at least has given way, and has been bolted together by strong iron bars. He touches the spot where a large poker was at one time chained, so that if a row commenced that important factor was greatly circumscribed in its uses. The mantelpiece looks down upon you with a black leaded face as grip as “old nick himself”. He also shows you a stout oaken cased clock, which has watched an ever-changing company for a Hundred years. He makes you smile as he says that that funny old portrait which hangs in front of you is none other than Tim Bobbin the Lancashire poet. He has a fine array of old maps, which point out the various countries and make you, feel what a little and insignificant handful the British islands are. In the Squires room, where the magistrates used to sit and deal out both dogberry and equitable justice, he has on the walls a handsome picture, the noble ligaments of which make you feel that the possessor of them must have been a brave and courteous gentleman. Inscribed thereon you find Richard Beaumont, Sherriff of the County of York 1713. Born 19^th October 1670, died 14^th November 1723. In this room the court sat and alternately, at Kirklees and at Armitage Bridge. The latter place has been transmogrified into a conservative club, which shows to what strange uses old institutions may degenerate. Although rooms are so low that you could not help stooping as you pass through them, the Squires room is high and lightsome, and withal very cheery and comfortable. Several other portraits are looking down upon you from this ancient room, and not the least interesting is that of the sturdy, shrewd, and out spoken Dr Lockwood, the mere mention whose name is sufficient in this district to make him known, without giving his pedigree or his habitation. It is not unusual thing for the inhabitants of Kirkheaton to take their friends and visitors to Kirk Stile to see this fine old specimen of an English doctor. Mine host is not afraid to show you into his private room that, without going into details, must be admitted to be a retiring room for one weary of the din made by the orders of weary and thirsty travellers, and the un weary never slaked tipplers. It hear where you are amply gratified to have a peep at the old mother church, hard by, before it was rebuilt, or before it’s churchyard glutted with the great majority. Then you follow your guide up a stoutly built staircase, which he laughingly reminds you, has been ascended by worse, if not by many better men than you are, and ere you reach it’s landing you brush past 2 fine pictures done up in real Home Fed Bacon, and you wish it was either breakfast time or any other time that you might practically judge of their quality’s. The bedrooms, aye! Even the low snug and cosy bedrooms, are shown to you, and another cased clock stands staring at you with a weird stateliness’. An old portrait of Lionel Pilkington looks on from the last century, and the tidy little rooms look a fit resting place for the weary traveller. Mine host has everything in apple pie order, and the fullest liberty is given to you to see her well-cared chambers. You take a breathing in the garden behind the house and find it to be literally darkened with a welcome shade. Its many fruit trees are a fascinating temptation to you while its summerhouse is so overgrown with foliage that it looks more like a fairy’s retiring room than a refreshing place for mortals. A long room, over the kitchen and larder is next opened for you, and you at once perceive that it is just the place for feasting and dancing to the music of this musical village. You almost see the many swains, coy damsels, with their hale old fathers and mothers of the last century, as they used to meet to honour passing events or to inaugurate new movements. It was in this very room where the first choral society for this district commenced, and which has developed into the Huddersfield choral society, of which we are so justly proud. The kitchen is now entered, and with everything in order, you see that man or animal could be well provided for on the shortest notice. The Monster fireplace suggest the roasting of a whole sheep rather than a separate joint. The wide jawed oven is more like a cavern than anything else is. There is a universal neatness, which pervades this place, and its well-fitted pantry, that be tokens scrupulous care and good management. Another old cased clock stands quietly surveying you, and looks as firm and its ticking sounds as strong as it could do when it was first made 100 years ago. This fine old-time piece was once in the possession of the now veteran bowler Mr James Kaye of Hill Side. Here the ever-faithful dog is watching your slightest movements, and the sedate parrot looks as it if can divide your thoughts. A light is now procured and you descend into the cellar, and note its well-worn steps. You begin to think of the ghastly vaults, and as you traverse the many cavernous passages, you fear lest grim guide may lead you into some terrible place and loose you among the dead men. You soon find you may trust him, as he begins to describe his sparkling ales, his neat old spirits, and his well-matured wines. It is a wondrous treat to be shown into his wine cellar. While the floor is kept scrupulously clean, the top is allowed as nature wishes. Fungi has developed themselves in such prodigious quantities that you have to stoop in order to avoid them. Although the ground above is scorched and panting for a drop of water, here the crystal drops stand out and trickle down the walls as if independent of the rainfall. The vast quantity of cobwebs that hang about, and which are on no account to be disturbed, make you think that mine host came from Laputa, so well described in Gulliver’s travels, where the spiders were about to supplant the silk worms in the production of silk, because spiders could not only spin but weave as well. With a sigh of relief, you reach the cosy bar again, and then listen to stories and legends of bygone days, which are the more enchanting because the re-encounters of them are, for the most part, the principals. Mr Jenkinson, the late parish clerk, enters and has no end of ludicrous incidents to relate to you about the jolly weddings he has assisted in consummating, and the mournful episodes of burials to which he has to say amend. You instinctively feel that you have seen him before, if only by the eyes of a newly christened baby. He tells you that in his thirty-two and a half years clerkship he has helped to christened, wed, and buried thousands upon thousands of his fellow creatures, and in fact, you soon find him to be a living encyclopaedia of local and general events. Mine host shows you a few rare old summonses which have been carefully preserved, and which he has placed on his walls for the behoof or his amusement of his customers. If the law was carried out as strictly now as the following shows, what a fine time, as mine host remarks, the magistrates had.

Note.. The Landlord in the 1881 census was a Richard Thornton (b1832) and farmer of 28 aces and employing one man.

Transcribed from the Huddersfield Echo by Roger Armitage

Kirkheaton History Group 2022

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