Yorkshire Almanac 2026

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

From Joseph Bentley’s day book

Mr Patchet, Blake Carr in Thornton, Halifax

31st September, 1803, attending you with Act of Parliament for inclosing Thornton Common. Copy of an award of Allotment of Common allotted to Abraham Knowles. Journey to your house. Notice to fair copies to John Wright. Not use a way in your land. Also a notice that two copies not to divert the water running under your covered way, from the well in his lands to the well in your lands, and to make foul the water. Ducks or pigs, etc……. £0 10s 6d [£55.19 in 2020]

3rd May, 1804, received 10/6 J.B.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Comment

The price is wrong, September has 30 days, Thornton has never formed part of Halifax, and this is surely an obscure joke. Re Joseph Bentley, Cudworth says that “his wife survived him and was the last person in Bradford to use a sedan chair.” See also his relative Brian Bentley, the Halifax Poet.

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• 📌Bradford (73) W/G ·
• Duck (3) W/G ·
• 📌Halifax (43) W/G ·
• Humour (29) W/G ·
• Land law (2) W/G ·
• Law (4) W/G ·
• Lawyer (1) W/G ·
• Litter (vehicle) (2) W/G ·
• Pig (11) W/G ·
• Thornton, West Yorkshire (5) W/G ·
• Water resources law (2) W/G ·
• Water right (2) W/G ·
• West Riding of Yorkshire (150) W/G ·

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Comment

The price is wrong, September has 30 days, Thornton has never formed part of Halifax, and this is surely an obscure joke. Re Joseph Bentley, Cudworth says that “his wife survived him and was the last person in Bradford to use a sedan chair.” See also his relative Brian Bentley, the Halifax Poet.

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Similar

16 August 1842: Lancastrian plug-drawing rioters invade Skipton in an attempt to halt the mills

23 January 1643: Thomas Fairfax, the Rider of the White Horse, captures Leeds from the Beast with the help of Psalm 68

12 December 1641: John Sugden causes panic in Bradford and Pudsey with news of the imminent advent of genocidal Irish Catholics

3 July 1643: The Royalists take Bradford after the Second Siege, but are warned off massacring the inhabitants by a ghost

29 December 1759: In an unusual case of genitive determinism, “Julius Caesar” Ibbetson – painter at first of ship’s hulls and later of landscapes – is delivered from his dead mother at Farnley Moor (Leeds)

8 June 1679: At death’s door, Brian Bentley, the Halifax Poet, refuses a cap unless it be a barley-cap

20 April 1835: A teetotallers’ tea-party at the first, great, Wilsden Temperance Festival

8 June 1561: A York official explains why textile manufacturing has left his city for the West Riding

18 December 1642: “Bradford quarter” is given to a Royalist besieger during the First Siege

29 July 1895: The Law Lords rule that Edward Pickles of Trooper’s Farm may, even in malice, divert water under his property away from Bradford’s Hewenden Reservoir

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Comment

Michael Taggart:

Part of the case’s enduring influence lies in its illustration of the 19th-century judges’ solicitude towards private property. Pickles illustrates the potency of the common law principle that whenever possible (and perhaps even when it is not possible) statutes will be interpreted by the courts to protect the property interests of individuals… The judges ignored or dismissed earlier dicta supporting [an exception for malice] in English, American, and Scottish cases, as well as in Roman law. In Continental Europe these Roman law seeds have flowered into a doctrine of abuse of rights, that first gook hold in France in the 19th century and has since spread like wildfire throughout the civil law.

And:

Pickles won the legal battle but lost the war. He succeeded in disrupting the water supply (although, it turns out, only temporarily), but the Corporation steadfastly refused to buy his land or his water. A few years later Edward Pickles sold the farm (the Corporation having refused to buy it), and he and his family emigrated to North America and disappeared without trace (Taggart 2002).

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