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BY WILLIAM DICKON HOYLE, ESQ.

(Read 19th January, 1898.)

FEW years ago, whilst staying in the small town of Havant, in Hampshire, I met with, at the Church Institute there, an interesting work called The Mistress of Langdale Hall, written by Miss R. M. Kettle, now deceased, and dedicated to Mr. John Lister, M.A., a well-known Yorkshire archæologist, residing at and owning Shibden Hall, near Halifax, co. York, where the book was written in 1876. The three principal places described in it are the Hall, the Grange, and Noel Hall which anyone, after having read the work, and being acquainted with the neighbourhood and the large parish of Halifax, would conclude to be Shibden Hall, Shibden Grange and High Sunderland, all situated within a mile of the ancient town of Halifax.

The Lady of Langdale Hall was Miss Lister, who lived a generation ago, and was a great-aunt of Mr. John Lister; and was noted as having written a Diary, which was published by her great-nephew in the Halifax local newspaper a few years ago, giving an interesting account of past customs, manners, and people in the parish of Halifax.

The name Langdale has evidently originated from the marriage of Elizabeth, daughter of Peter Langdale, Esq., of Beverley, co. York, and sister of Marmaduke

Lord Langdale, with Abraham Sunderland, Esq., of High Sunderland, living in 1620.

According to Burke's Extinct Peerage, etc., Charles Phillip, 16th Baron Stourton, born 1752, married, in 1775, the daughter and co-heir of Marmaduke, 5th Baron Langdale, which barony expired in 1774.

Of these three houses the most important one is the Hall, or Shibden Hall.

It

It has

This is an ancient and picturesque half-timbered house, part of which is fourteenth-century work. is situated in the township of Northowram. been the property, and residence, of the Lister family since 1612. Richard Lister, in 1439, bought land at Hipperholme, about a mile distant from Shibden Hall, on the road to Bradford. He was descended, according to an entry in the History of Hipperholme-cum-Brighouse (in the parish of Halifax) from Bate, le Lister (or Dyer), of Halifax, in the year 1289, whose name was mentioned in the Brighouse Court Rolls as holding lands in the parish of Halifax in 1311. One of the family, John Lister, who was born in 1602, was fined for not attending to receive the honour of knighthood at the Coronation of King Charles I. The receipt for this fine was signed by Wentworthe, Earl of

Strafford."

The Lister family bought Shibden Hall from the Waterhouse family.

The Arms of Lister appear on the inner roof of Halifax Church, and are "ermine, on a fess sable, three mullets or; a dexter canton gules." Without the canton, they are similar to those of Lord Ribblesdale, representative of the Listers of Gisburn, in Craven, seated there, I think, from 1350; and Lord Masham, popularly known in Bradford as "Sam Lister," the representative of the Listers of Manningham Hall, Bradford, where they have been for three hundred years; and the spirited and courageous inventor of the machine for wool-combing, which had hitherto been done by hand; a machine through which, before he perfected it, he lost the large sum of £350,000.

He, at last, succeeded, and by his various operations in

trade he made millions of pounds, as is evidenced by his purchase, in various parts of Yorkshire, of the old family estates of Jervaulx Abbey, Swinton Park, near Masham; Acketon Hall, etc. The latter place, curiously, in the seventeenth century, belonged to the Sunderlands of High Sunderland, an old hall, which we are coming to later on.

The following lines, written by the late Miss Kettle, refer to Shibden Hall :

"Red and white roses on terrace and wall,

Stars of white jasmine illumine our hall.

Old checkered woodwork, cream white and dark brown ;
Moonlight o'erflowing the clough and the down,
Lights sparkling out on the hillside and crest,
Fountains at play, and all Nature at rest.”

This place, and the vale leading out of it, was anciently called Schepden, and was the home of the De Schepdens, the first of whom known was William de Schepden, who lived temp. Ed. I, and granted lands to his son John in

1306.

His descendants assumed the name of Drake, of whom the tenth in descent was Thomas Drake, of Horley Green (in the immediate neighbourhood), whose residence, an ancient and now dilapidated building, is called Sourmilk Hall, in Horley Green.

His son, John Drake, at Horley Green, a yeoman, who made his will in 1665, was of a very covetous disposition; and he obtained the sobriquet of "Dives from Dr. Favour, a noted Puritan divine, who was Vicar of Halifax.

From these Drakes descended those of Barnoldswick Cotes, near Skipton, in the Craven district of Yorkshire, where they had an estate of 500 acres, with 10 messuages, 10 tofts, and 10 gardens.

The mansion where they dwelt is now in ruins.

Later on, the family of Otes, modernized as Oates, became seated at Shibden Hall, who were succeeded by the Savilles-a well-known name in the parish of Halifax -I might say, the premier name in the parish. They were brought into, and settled in, Halifax parish by the marriage of a Saville with the heiress of Copley, of Copley