The History Of Kelfield
Kelfield is recorded in the Domesday Book (1086) as Chelchefelt, ‘an estate of one carucate and seven bovates… The estate of Hugh son of Baldric had land for one plough, and four villeins had a plough there’.
In 1833, The Times reported how York Prophetess, Hannah Beedham, preaching from a cart on Queen’s Staith in the city predicted her own death. It would occur, she said, at 9pm on 1st August (now Yorkshire Day). James Sturdy, a ‘respectable’ Kelfield farmer and gardener offered her the parlour of his dwelling in the village in order for her to die with dignity, away from the squalor of Hagworm’s Nest, Skeldergate, where she lived. Here she lay in state for nine days.
Thousands made a pilgrimage on foot, horse-drawn or by boat to Kelfield to be ‘in at the death’. The time, however, came and went, and Hannah Beedham ‘remained an inhabitant of this lower sphere‘. The crowds dispersed and Kelfield resumed its ‘quietude‘. (York Courant, Yorkshire Gazette, July and August, 1833)
The 1871 Kelly’s Directory offers the following description of the village: ‘Kelfield is a township in the parish of Stillingfleet, union of Selby, 9 miles south of York and is situated on the River Ouse. There is a ferry here to Cawood. Thomas Henry Preston Esq. is Lord of the Manor and the chief landowner. The soil is clayey and sandy; the subsoil clay. The chief crops are wheat, oats and potatoes. The population in 1871 was 394 and the acreage 1,729‘.
A swing bridge was built across the river to replace the ferry at the same crossing point in 1872.
Kelfield was originally in the old East Riding of Yorkshire, the river Ouse dividing it from the West Riding, until 1974 when it became part of North Yorkshire. Its population has hardly changed since the 1871 census, though the number of dwellings have more than doubled in the same period.
There may be no school, chapel, post office or shop now, but the Grey Horse Inn (pictured right, c.1930) is still open every evening and during the day on weekends and the fertile fields are still farmed. Kelfield has become ‘a sought after village’ to reside in and now boasts barn conversions and holiday cottages.
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