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Situated at SD866491 Stock is shown on the map as an earthwork near to Bracewell. Stock is now a small cluster of farms but it was once a relatively substantial 'nucleated' medieval settlement; a village clustered around a main centre, possibly manor house. Aerial photographs, and archaeological records, show the layout of this now deserted village. The following plan provides the outline of the settlement, there would have been a number of dwellings situated along the hollow ways, or tracks. Although place-name meaning is not an exact science in many cases, it may be worth noting that stoc was a Saxon term meaning 'summer pasture'. This could have the connotation whereby earlier settlements would have used the Stock area for grazing their cattle in the dryer season, or it may have served as a settlement providing pasture for a larger estate. The hill at Stock named Grazenber reflects this use; the word has its root in the Old English grasian with the same meaning as the modern word graze.
In 1147 the Cistercian monks were granted lands in Barnoldswick by Henry de Lacy, following this they intended to erect a monastery at St. Mary's Hill, this is now the Calf Hall area. Contemporary accounts of this show that prior to 1147 there had been an older, established church within the immediate area. Belonging to this ancient church were a number of parochial vills known as: Marton; another Marton; Bracewell; STOCK; Barnoldswick itself and two smaller vills named Elfwynthorpe and Brogden. It is reasonable to assume, therefore, that the vill of Stock was inhabited in the 12th century.
There is a distinct lack of archaeological information on the subject of medieval settlement within Lancashire and West Yorkshire. This period was fairly represented in the 19th and early 20th centuries but little has been added to this knowledge since then. The Sites and Monuments Record for Lancashire shows 42 deserted, or shrunken settlements from the medieval period; Stock, being the finest example of its type in Lancashire, is the only one listed as a scheduled monument.
Of medieval villages in general one suggestion for the cause of desertion within some northern villages is that of the 'harrying of the North' by William 1st. He brought his army north in the later 11th century to subdue the naughty northern barons and, just to teach them a lesson, burnt many villages, woods and crops in a broad swathe from Yorkshire down into Lancashire. The Domesday book records that a large estate around the Preston area had only 16 inhabited townships out of a total of 60. This indicates depopulation of the area before 1086, possibly an invasion of the area by Malcolm 111 in 1061 was equally as likely to have caused this as was the harrying of the North.
In the early medieval period the lower areas of our upland zone were exploited for the grazing of cattle and a cluster of farm buildings would serve a common cause. In many cases there were two distinct areas - a larger one for the pasturing of animals and a smaller one, usually divided into strips, for the growing of crops. The pasture land would hold the largest building, and the buildings clustered around were to serve the workforce.
By the 8th century there were numerous large estates throughout the country, these comprised of a scattering of farming settlements, all of which appeared to contribute to the general welfare of the estate as a whole. Within these estates, or lordships, there could be hamlets bonded to the estate, free hamlets, hamlets under the control of the king (or church) and other hamlets sited to exploit the outlying wastes.
In "The Origins of Lancashire" Denise Kenyon suggests that the place-name component of tun was in use by the 7th century to signify a place that formed a component part of an estate ie; Eccleston was 'church tun,' Bolton was the 'tun of the hall' and Chorlton was 'the peasant's tun.' The prefix would indicate the contribution that the tun settlement made to the wider economy of the estate - it strikes me that the village of Thornton, on the outskirts of Barnoldswick, could be seen to be a part of a larger whole. Further to this Denise Kenyon goes on to state that as these estates grew, other smaller settlements evolved in response to the specialised needs of the estate. The place-name suffix wic is especially associated with these subordinate settlements; the wic element can have a range of meanings but frequently signifies a particular function such as trading, dairying or industry. However, within our area the wic suffix is commonly related to specifics such as salt, fish, barley and personal names (Bernulf's wic - Barnoldswick). Interestingly it would appear that the names cot and stoc , when associated with a wic, tend to denote secondary settlements of the late Saxon period and are now widely accepted as being the smallest internal sub-divisions of estates. The reason for this is possibly that the established settlements were too small to support the expanding population and that the sons of the landowners would need to settle in a separate, nearby location. In later Saxon times, and following the Norman Conquest, these small settlements became independent farmsteads and hamlets. Many of these exist today, but a good number have disappeared.
We have, then, Ms. Kenyon's evidence that the names of cot, stoc and wic were associated with the secondary colonisation of our area and are, therefore, seen as indications of the fragmentation of earlier estates. Within modern Barnoldswick is the area of Coates (cot), adjoining the town is the village of Thornton (tun) and nearby is the deserted village of Stock (stoc). Given that wic could indicate a later settlement within an existing estate is it possible that Barnoldswick, Coates, Bracewell and Stock all grew around an original estate centred on Thornton? The fact that the ancient Ghyll Church is sited within the Thornton area may give credence to its former importance. It can be argued, however, that Marton, Stock and Elfwynthorp were noted in 1147 as being vills attached to the church at Calf Hall, not Ghyll. If we look at the overall time-frame involved here then the date of 1147 is relatively late - by this time the proposed estate could have been beginning to centralise in the Wapping area of modern-day Barnoldswick.
Returning to the reason for the depopulation of medieval villages, the continued population expansion of the 12th and 13th centuries ground to a halt in the 14 th century. In this century the Black Death, amongst other things, was responsible for an estimated decline in the population as a whole of as much as 30-50% - this may not have been as severe within our under-populated area, however, famine could have been the major factor in the higher death-rates of the 14th century here. As the population contracted it is thought that the more productive settlements would become available for tenure, this would cause the more outlying farmsteads to be abandoned in many areas.
The Lancashire part of the former West Riding of Yorkshire has a cluster of known deserted medieval sites, these include Battersby, Easington and Stock. There is also the consideration that Elfwynthorp, a known vill of the Barnoldswick area, was another deserted settlement that has (to date) not been identified.
The deserted sites within our area tend to be of the larger, village scale rather than individual farmsteads. The establishment of vaccaries (cow farms or booths) by the Norman lords in the 14th century could explain this, upland farms were an important part of the central vaccary farm and could have enjoyed relative security - this would help to ensure continuous tenure through to the present day.
Conclusion:
If we accept that Stock was populated in 1147, when it was described as being a parochial vill of the ancient church at Calf Hall then we must look into factors relating to its depopulation within a later period. The 13th century saw periods within which the local people would have cause to worry about their livelihood but nothing of great enough importance to see the abandonment of an established village. The 14th century, with its plagues and crop failure, certainly provides a sound enough reason to suggest that many villages could have rapidly lost their inhabitants within this period. The 15th and 16th centuries saw the lords lose direct interest in their vaccaries and they let them out to individuals as copyhold tenancies - this formed the basis of the pattern of our scattered farmsteads today. As farming became more mechanised, and therefore more intensive, and the emphasis moved from a feudal (in some ways social) system towards a system of individual operation, then the extended estates contracted.
Moving into the modern period it appears that in the case of Barnoldswick the settlement around the present town prospered, possibly through its advantage of water supply. As the town consolidated the outlying areas of Stock (and possibly Elfwynthorp) were no longer tenable and so the people deserted their settlements and moved into the new town. The fact that Thornton did not disappear possibly bears testament to its former importance (or its position at an important crossroads) - it was not deserted, but neither did it prosper.
There is written evidence showing that Stock was still inhabited in the early 1800s, people were listed as “of Stock Towne” - there were also two shopkeepers at this time. Even today the cluster of farms in the area of Stock village earthworks can be seen as forming a hamlet, thus the “desertion” of Stock is a slight misnomer in as much as the area is still populated. The heart of the village obviously disappeared when the majority of its inhabitants moved into nearby Barnoldswick town, to man the new mills there, during the 19th century.
Map courtesy of Stanley Graham
John A Clayton
Barrowford
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