Historic Yorkshire

Gems of
Medieval History

England's Armageddon

A Day in
Richard's Life

THE CHAPEL OF ST MARY, LEAD.

by Geoffrey Richardson

Known colloquially now - and probably through the Middle Ages - as Lead Church, St Mary's was likely to have been a private chapel, attached to the manor house which stood close-by to the west [belfry] end of the church. It would have been open for worship on the Sabbath of the estate and farm workers living in the hamlet of Lead, which lay in the field fronting the church to the Cock Beck boundary.

The present structure dates from the 14th century when it replaced an earlier building originally raised two hundred years previously. The building was twice its current length originally and seems to have lost the original chancel about the end of the 16th century.

Tombstones from the former chancel were preserved and placed before the new altar in the present building. Latin inscriptions can be clearly read on two of them, preserved through being cut into the chamfer of the stone. The first relates to "The noble knight Baldwin Tyas [Nobilis miles Baldwinius Teutonicus]" who is known to have held the fief 1219/1236, followed by that of his wife "The Noble Lady Marjorie" and that of his son Franco, whose memorial inscription is in Norman-french and who followed his father as Lord of the Manor around 1260.

The Tyas family are the earliest Norman holders of the land whose records have been found, the anglicised version of their Germanic name springing from Teutonicus, Tiesci and Tedsechi, the latter two also carrying implications of Italian ancestral connections. Their arms incorporated the mallet [much more common in northern Europe than England] carved on the tombstones. The family were retainers of the de Lacy's, later Earls of Lincoln, and very large landowners in West Yorkshire. Before the de Lacy's, according to Domesday Book:

" ….In Lied Gunner had two carucates to be taxed and there may be three ploughs there. William now has it of Ilbert. In the demesne two ploughs and three villanes and two bordars with one plough, and two acres of meadow. Value in King Edward's [the Confessor] time twenty shillings now thirty shillings…." ["carucate": the amount of land that could be ploughed by a team of oxen in a season. "demesne": home. "villane": tied-villager who held his own home [hut?] "bordar": tied-villager who also lived in a tied-cottage.[hut?]

The furnishings of the church are attractive in their rustic simplicity, though the three tier pulpit [very rare today] dates from the 17th century.

The bench-pews probably date from the end of the medieval ages and the font, now re-located by the door, is almost certainly from the earlier church.

Guarding the footbridge over the Cock Beck, by which access to Lead is obtained, stands "The Crooked Billet", a hostelry famed for selling the "largest Yorkshire Puddings in the world" and which, according to legend, is built on the same site as a tavern where Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, rested his wounded knee throughout the battle of Towton a mile down the road. His sabbatical is marked today by the name of the hostelry, which connotes the St Andrews Cross, the badge of the Nevilles, and by the full colour display of the Neville Arms on the Inn sign.