Burtersett is a small village in the

Yorkshire Dales The Yorkshire Dales are a series of valleys, or Dale (landform), dales, in the Pennines, an Highland, upland range in England. They are mostly located in the Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county of North Yorkshire, but extend into C ...

North Yorkshire North Yorkshire is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in Northern England.The Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority areas of City of York, York and North Yorkshire (district), North Yorkshire are in Yorkshire and t ...

, England. It lies approximately east from

Hawes Hawes is a market town and civil parish in North Yorkshire, England, at the head of Wensleydale in the Yorkshire Dales, and historically in the North Riding of Yorkshire. The River Ure north of the town is a tourist attraction in the Yorks ...

and Gayle. The village is known for its former quarrying industry and being the seat of the Hillary family, with one strand of the family emigrating to New Zealand and raising

Sir Edmund Hillary Sir Edmund Percival Hillary (20 July 1919 – 11 January 2008) was a New Zealand mountaineer, explorer, and philanthropist. On 29 May 1953, Hillary and Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers confirmed to have reached th ...

, the famous mountaineer.

History

Whilst the village is not mentioned 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 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...

, its name is recorded as far back as 1280 as ''Beutresate''. The village has also been called ''Birtresatte'' and ''Butterside'', with the derivation being ''Shieling near the alder tree''. It was known that the area surrounding Burtersett was a Royal Forest during the reign of

Edward I Edward I (17/18 June 1239 – 7 July 1307), also known as Edward Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots (Latin: Malleus Scotorum), was King of England from 1272 to 1307. Concurrently, he was Lord of Ireland, and from 125 ...

, but gradually the local industry gave way to sheep farming, then later quarrying and dairy produce. Other industries included knitted products and a candles. The candle factory, a four-story building, still exists today, but the operation is believed to have stopped in the early 20th century. Quarrying on the moor south of the village reached a peak in 1890, when two stone ''slate'' quarries were in operation; Burtersett and Seavy. Although the men referred to themselves as quarrymen, both sites were actually mines which operated gauge tramways to transport the stone into the village. The stone was called slate, but it was a sandstone, typically used as a flagstone, but thicker beds were used as a building stone in the area. When 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 Garsdale railway station on the Settle-Carlisle line ...

arrived in Hawes, the quarries were exporting per month via the

railway station Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in railway track, tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel railway track, rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of ...

Hillary Hall

The late 17th/early 18th grade II listed building known as ''Hillary Hall'' was formerly the seat of Sir Henry Hillary, a landowner in Upper Wensleydale. The house was the birthplace of many in the Hillary family, including William Hillary (physician) (1697–1763), who was known for his work on tropical diseases. His nephew, Sir William Hillary, who campaigned for the institution of the

RNLI The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) is the largest of the lifeboat services operating around the coasts of the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Channel Islands, and the Isle of Man, as well as on some inland waterways. Founded in 1824 ...

, was born in the village. The grandparents of the mountaineer

emigrated from Wensleydale to New Zealand in the 19th century.

Governance

Historically, Burtersett was in the Parish of Aysgarth and the

wapentake A hundred is an administrative division that is geographically part of a larger region. It was formerly used in England, Wales, some parts of the United States, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, and in Cumberland County in the British Colony of ...

of Hang West. Whilst it now belongs in the civil parish of Hawes which it is nearer, Aysgarth was the largest settlement around until the

Richmond to Lancaster Turnpike The Richmond to Lancaster Turnpike, was a road that was opened in the second half of the 18th century between Richmond, North Yorkshire, Richmond, in the North Riding of Yorkshire and Lancaster, Lancashire, Lancaster in Lancashire, Northern Engl ...

was diverted off Cam High Road (south of Burtersett) to go through Hawes and over Widdale.

References

External links

Map of the village
{{authority control Villages in North Yorkshire Hawes

History

Hillary Hall

Governance

See also

References

External links