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In 1780 the population of Embsay and Eastby was about 300. Most of the adults were tenant farmers, farm labourers and servants, hand spinners and weavers, or quarry labourers and masons, with many households doing a mixture of all these occupations according to the seasons. There were no Mills, and no Chapels or Churches.

Church attendance was all but compulsory and the parish church of Holy Trinity in Skipton involved a walk of at least two miles each way every Sunday, apart from the better-off who would ride. Couples married at Holy Trinity and took their infants for baptism, and families took their dead for burial.

However, by the 1841 Census, only 60 years later, the population of Embsay and Eastby had tripled to almost 1,000 and the two villages had undergone dramatic changes. There were seven textile Mills and four non-conformist Chapels, and the villagers followed at least eight different religious denominations: Quakers, Independents (or Congregationalists), Eastby Methodists, Swedenborgians (New Jerusalem Church), Primitive Methodists, Embsay Wesleyans, Roman Catholics and Anglicans. St Mary’s Anglican Church was not built until 1853.

There had been Quakers in Embsay and Eastby as early as the 1650’s. The Independents met in their village homes, and from about 1770 had their own Congregational Church on Newmarket Street, Skipton. The Eastby Methodists were meeting from at least 1800 and the surviving Eastby Methodist Chapel was built in 1818.

By 1815 Embsay Union Chapel had been built on East Lane for use by all denominations. Over the door was a stone tablet that read “This is a House of Prayer for All People”. It was used by the Embsay Methodists, the Embsay Independents, the Swedenborgians, and the Primitive Methodists. A series of disagreements between the different groups eventually led each of them to build their own Chapels. Firstly the Swedenborgians built the New Jerusalem Church on Pasture Road in 1833, later enlarged and replaced by the present building, now the Children’s Centre, in 1912. The Wesleyan Methodists opened their own Chapel on Main Street in 1839, whilst the troublesome Primitive Methodists retained and renamed the Union Chapel.

By the mid 1830’s the first Roman Catholic family arrived in Embsay from Ireland. Timothy Harragan and his wife Mary (Kierce) had 10 children born in Embsay between 1837 and 1859 and later lived at Bridge End Cottages, Eastby. They initially attended Broughton Church and later St Stephens Catholic Church in Skipton, built by the Tempest family of Broughton Hall, which held its first service in 1842. A detailed article on each of the Religious Groups and their Chapels and Churches will follow in the coming months.

NEXT TIME: PART 2 – THE QUAKERS OF EMBSAY & EASTBY

David Turner, Embsay with Eastby Historical Research Group