AYSGARTH ENGLAND ... throughout time

Aysgarth is a village and civil parish in Wensleydale, in North Yorkshire, England. The village is in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, about 16 miles (26 km) south-west of Richmond and 22.6 miles (36.4 km) west of the county town of Northallerton. History Evidence of prehistoric activity has been recorded in the parish, including a Bronze Age burial.. The village is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Echescard. The toponymy is derived from the combination of the Old Norse words eiki, meaning oak, and skarð, which may mean open space, cleft or mountain pass, so the probable meaning is Oak tree cleft, referring to the valley cut by the River Ure.. At the time of the Norman Conquest, the manor was held by Cnut, son of Karli. Afterwards the manor was in the possession of Count Alan of Brittany, who granted lordship to Geoffrey of Swaffham.[.By the 13th century, the manor was in the hands of the Burgh family of Hackforth. The manor descended with the manor of Hackforth until 1480, at which time they were conveyed to the Crown in the person of Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Some lands in the manor in the 13th century came into the hands of the lords of Middleham and then followed the descent of the manor of Thoralby. The village's railway station, part of the Hawes Branch of the North Eastern Railway, opened in 1878 and closed in April 1954..