Aiskew is a village in the

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of Parish (administrative division), administrative parish used for Local government in England, local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below district ...

of Aiskew and Leeming Bar, in the Hambleton District of

North Yorkshire North Yorkshire is the largest ceremonial county (lieutenancy area) in England, covering an area of . Around 40% of the county is covered by national parks, including most of the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors. It is one of four cou ...

, England. The village is situated to the immediate north-east of Bedale and separated from it by Bedale Beck.

History

Remains of a Roman Villa were unearthed, in 2015, north of Sand Hill in the village. The building is thought to have been two storeys high with a

hypocaust A hypocaust ( la, hypocaustum) is a system of central heating in a building that produces and circulates hot air below the floor of a room, and may also warm the walls with a series of pipes through which the hot air passes. This air can warm th ...

on the ground floor. Animal remains were found extensively across the site. It is thought the site dated from the third to fourth century AD and would have been situated along

Dere Street Dere Street or Deere Street is a modern designation of a Roman road which ran north from Eboracum (York), crossing the Stanegate at Corbridge ( Hadrian's Wall was crossed at the Portgate, just to the north) and continuing beyond into what is ...

. The site was covered as part of the construction of the Bedale, Aiskew and Leeming Bar by-pass, which opened on 11 August 2016 as part of the upgrade to the A1(M). The village was known as ''Echescol'' in the ''

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

'' in the

Hundred 100 or one hundred (Roman numeral: C) is the natural number following 99 and preceding 101. In medieval contexts, it may be described as the short hundred or five score in order to differentiate the English and Germanic use of "hundred" to des ...

of Count Alan of Brittany, the previous Lord having been ''Gospatric''. The village had 7 ploughlands. The Lordship of the Manor followed that of neighbouring Bedale. The name is derived from

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and t ...

words ''eik'' (oak) and ''skógr'' (wood) and means ''Oak wood''. In 2013 Masons Gin established a distillery in the village.

Governance

The village lies within the Richmond Parliamentary constituency, the Bedale ward of Hambleton District Council and the Bedale Electoral Division of North Yorkshire County Council. Aiskew Civil Parish includes the village of Leeming Bar.

Demography

According to the 2001 UK Census, the population was 2,163 living in 863 dwellings. The 2011 UK Census showed this had increased to 2,427 in 985 dwellings.

Community

The village is in the Primary Education Catchment Area of Bedale Church of England Primary School, though it is also close to Aiskew, Leeming Bar Church of England Primary School, in Leeming Bar. It is within the Secondary Education Catchment Area of Bedale High School. The

Wensleydale Railway The Wensleydale Railway is a heritage railway in Wensleydale and Lower Swaledale in North Yorkshire, England. It was built in stages by different railway companies and originally extended to railway station on the Settle-Carlisle line. Si ...

, a tourist and heritage line, includes station on the Aiskew side of Bedale Beck at the edge of the village. The signal box opposite Park House is a Grade II listed building. In the village is an 18th-century Grade II listed water mill with all its original wooden machinery. There is also an 18th-century Leech House next to the beck.

Religion

The Catholic church in the village is dedicated to St Mary & St Joseph and was built in 1878, designed by Mr George Goldie of London, after the original Chapel became too small for the congregation. There had been both a Baptist church and Primitive Methodist Chapel in the village. The Methodist Church in Aiskew, which was part of the Ripon & Lower Dales Methodist Circuit, has closed and the congregation merged with the Bedale & District Methodist Church.

References

External links

* {{authority control Villages in North Yorkshire Hambleton District