Doncaster Family History Society
Tickhill was a place of far greater importance in the middle ages than it has been subsequently. The visible remains of its local significance are its castle and the high quality of its parish church. The Normans probably deliberately created a new borough, with a market and fairs and made the town the centre of a major estate or ‘honour’. The importance of the town as the centre of a great estate probably helped its prosperity. Certainly, at the time of the poll-tax levied in 1379, the town had 461 residents classed as taxpayers, a substantial figure for the period, when Doncaster, then one of the most prosperous towns in Yorkshire had a taxed population of 756.
From the beginning of the twelfth century, the honour belonged to the Crown, and the royal Duchy of Lancaster remains the owner of the castle. The Normans also moved the meetings of the court of the ‘wapentake’ (an ancient and important division of a county) from its traditional open-air location at Strafforth, near the river Don at Mexborough to Tickhill, where it probably met inside the castle.
The castle had an eventful history in national life. It was held for the usurping prince John against his brother king Richard I, when the latter returned from abroad in 1194, after his absence on crusade, was the site of a three-week siege during baronial conflicts in 1322 and in the civil war of the 1640s its importance as a local centre of resistance led to its ‘slighting’(intentional disabling) by Parliament after the defeat of the royalist forces there in 1648. (Conisbrough, long disused as a fortress by this time, escaped such a fate.) To-day Tickhill castle remains an impressive ruin, retaining its Norman gatehouse, built in 1129-1130, the foundations of the keep on a mound 75 feet in height, built in 1178-1179 on the model of the keep at Conisbrough, substantial defensive ditches, some parts of which remain as a moat, and walls enclosing an inner courtyard covering two acres.
The church, dedicated to St Mary, is one of the very finest in the area, indeed, in the region. Pevsner, in his survey of The Buildings of England, describes it as ‘the proudest parish church in the West Riding, except for those of the big towns’. The church was already its final size by the thirteenth century, arguing for the substantial early prosperity of the community. But then elaborate and extensive rebuilding took place over the century from about 1350 to 1450, heightening the nave and the tower, to create the tall, light-filled building which we know to-day.
The following records of Tickhill, St Mary are available at Doncster Archives :
Baptisms 1542-1895 Marriages 1538-1910 Burials 1537-1901 Banns 1798-1838
Index : Baptisms 1542-1718, 1771-1839 Marriages 1538-1677, 1754-1838 Burials 1538-1674, 1771-1855
Bishop’s transcripts 1600-1866