A Thousand Ages: The Story of the Church in Dentdale
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The text below is taken from a church booklet written by David Boulton in 1995. It is reproduced with kind permission of the author.
If the church is a building made of stone and lime, the parish church of Dent has another century to stand before it celebrates its one thousandth birthday. But if the church is the local community, born and bred (and eventually buried) within a broad Christian tradition, the church in Dent boasts a recorded history no less than fourteen centuries long.
Dunawt, Celtic warrior-king of a sixth-century Pennine kingdom centred on Dent (which takes its name from him), died in the year 597, probably slain in battle by the advancing English who had conquered the Celtic British on both sides of the Pennine chain and were now advancing into the hills and dales. Dunawt's people were Celtic Christians and "Regione Dunutinga", the "region of Dunawt's people", may have been under the control of one of the many short-lived Celtic monasteries founded by Columba, which briefly flourished in the north at that time. There is a short but vivid account, written in 715 by the English monk Eddius Stephanus, telling how the English armies (recently Christianised, but following the Roman rather than the Celtic tradition) drove out the "British clergy" from Dent, the Ribble and other newly-conquered "holy places". The English kings Ecgfrith of Northumbria and Aelfwine of Deira (most of Yorkshire) then granted Dent to their new church at Ripon, which exercised its authority over the dale until a new wave of invaders, the Vikings, sacked the mother-church and wrecked its administration.
The Norman church
Dent was missed by the Doomsday surveyors and does not appear in recorded history until the twelfth century, when yet another group of conquerors, the Normans, finally managed to extend their control into the remote fastnesses of the north-west, much of which had long been a Scottish province. In 1131 the archdeaconry of Richmond, in the diocese of York, was divided into eight deaneries, with Dent and Sedbergh in that of Kirkby Lonsdale. The two churches were probably built soon after, both dedicated to St Andrew (suggesting a continuing Scottish and perhaps Columban influence). Probably at the same time, the three ancient townships of Sedbergh, Garsdale and Dent were consolidated as a single parish, with Sedbergh as mother-church and Dent as a parochial chapelry serving Garsdale as well as Dentdale.
The oldest parts of the present church building are presumed to date from this period and probably include the pillars in the nave and the Norman-arched doorway, now blocked but clearly visible from the outside, in the north-facing wall.
The earliest known deed in Dent, dated October 22nd 1290, confirms the use of land in Kyrkeyt (Kirthwaite, or upper Dentdale) granted by St John's Hospital (probably in York) to Thomas, son of Andrew de Dente. Andrew is said to have formerly held the land with "Robert the chaplain" , who is thus the first incumbent to whom we can put a name – if only a Christian name!
In those days a church was effectively the private property of a local lord, who collected the "great tithes" for himself and allowed the "small tithes" to the parson he appointed. Churches changed hands like other properties, and in the early 1300s a half-share of Sedbergh and Dent belonged to Andrew de Harcla, Earl of Carlisle. But when de Harla was hanged, drawn and quartered for failing to exert himself against a Scots pillaging party, much of his property, including his share in the two churches, was granted to one of the commissioners who had condemned him, Geoffrey le Scrope. Scrope hung on to most of his gains, but in 1333, for the good of his soul, he granted his share of the churches to the canons of Coverham Abbey, who were busy with a costly rebuilding programme after yet another Scots raid. The other half-share seems to have belonged to St Agatha's Abbey, Easy, but was probably transferred to Scrope to enable him to give the whole to Coverham.
Galloping priests
From 1333 until the dissolution of the monasteries two hundred years later, Dent and Sedbergh churches remained Coverham possessions, the abbey appointing one of its canons as vicar of Sedbergh and another as chaplain of Dent. It is not clear whether the two canons were resident within their parish and chapelry or whether they commuted at weekends, galloping the length of Wensleydale between abbey and churches. The probability is that they lived in the parish but were regularly summoned back to the abbey to participate in the common life there.
Dent's original status as a mere chapelry indicates that at first it had no burial ground of its own. But by 1443 it certainly had a "Kirk garth" and probably burial rights therein, as several dalesmen - William Leke, Adam Person, Robert, Roger, Gilbert and John Syggiswik (or Sedgwick), John Hodgson and George Mason – were prosecuted for fighting in the churchyard, which was "polluted by violent bloodshed". On conviction, they were sentenced to be flogged "in front of the procession round their parish church, with naked feet and shins and bare heads, clothed only in their doublets". Their names make a litany of the ancient families of Dent, mostly still with us, as do those of the 12-man jury, which included two Capsticks, a Mason, two Hodgsons, a Burton, a Willan, a Fawcett, a Garnet and a Trotter. The implication that Dent now had its own churchyard for burials, and the fact that the judgement specifically refers to the "parish church", is indicative of growing independence. Precisely when this started is unclear but Windermere and Grasmere, originally chapelries of Kendal, were granted their own burial rights in 1348. Perhaps Dent advanced towards independence at much the same time.
Certainly by 1451 the incumbent, John Holme, is described as “parish chaplain of Dent”. It is clear that by the mid fifteenth century Dent tended to be regarded both by the local community and by the recording clerks of the archdeaconry as to all intents and purposes a parish in its own right, which was soon to give rise to problems.
In taking over the two churches, Coverham had acquired the right to collect tithes of corn and hay, while tithes of mills, calves, foals, pigs, goats, geese, hens, ducks, pigeons, cannabis (hemp), leeks, herbs and eggs were due to the vicar. But there is evidence that from early in the fifteenth century the tenant-farmers of Dent were withholding their tithes from the distant and seemingly powerless monks. After repeated attempts to assert his rights, the Abbot of Coverham threatened all the inhabitants of Dent with excommunication, a sentence pronounced "each year three times at least". When this had no effect, the threat of hell-fire was extended to cover “their deceased ancestors, for example their fathers and mothers”.
The argument used by the ringleaders of the tithe-strike was that Dent was now a parish in its own right, rather than a part of Sedbergh, and that the tithes of corn and hay were legally due only from residents of Sedbergh! The dispute was not resolved until 1505 when Brother Christopher Salley of the Abbey met with “Thomas Sides, vicar of Sedbergh, William Sides, parish priest of Dent”, and the 24 “sidesmen” of Dent who constituted an early form of parish council. They agreed that instead of handing over a tenth of their corn and hay crop Dent's inhabitants would each pay a fixed annual "commutation", a sum of money ranging from one penny to two shillings and sixpence (and averaging just over ten pence). The bargain was very much in Dent's favour, not least because the agreement stipulated that the sum could not be raised even if the land was improved and the crop increased. Nor was any account taken of inflation, as corrosive then as it is today.
A generation later, there seems to have been an attempt by the 24 sidesmen to wrest control of "Kyrke house" land from Coverham. A pitched battle was fought in 1534 as the abbey's tenants were dispossessed by Marmeduke Hogeson, Richard Trotter, William Wyllan and others, armed with “bowes, arrowes, swordes, buklers and other defensible weapons”. "Kirk house" lands may refer to the land surrounding the church itself, or to Chapelhouses, now Low and High Chapel, below Kirk Bank and just over the Kirkthwaite boundary.
Royal letter to the “brutes” of Dent
By now, the abbey's days were numbered as Henry VIII began the dissolution of all monasteries. The men of Dent played a prominent part, wholly disproportionate to their numbers, in the revolt known as the “Pilgrimage of Grace”. Indeed, Dent's rebel army was alleged by the king's terrified informants to be no less than ten thousand strong! (The 1539 Muster Roll lists only 284 able-bodied men in the dale). Of special interest is the fact that, of all the demands put by the northern "Pilgrims" to the king, two applied specifically to "Dent, Sedbergh, Westmorland and Cumberland" the modern county of Cumbria. These were the abolition of compulsory tithe payments and the safeguarding of "tenants' right. The king himself wrote an angry letter to the "Brutes and inexpert Folk" of Dent and Sedbergh, asking how dare they question the wisdom and will of their monarch! But when the revolt was crushed, tenant's right survived - and so, it seems, did the local ringleaders: Brian Willen, bailiff of Dent, George Willen, William Garnet, and John Middleton and John Hebblethwaite of Sedbergh. Other Pilgrim leaders were hanged.
But tithes also survived. Those due to Coverham were transferred, after a short period in the hands of a speculator named Marmaduke Wyvell, to Trinity College, Cambridge – which soon found it as hard to extract money from Dent farmers as the abbot of Coverham had. In fact, the reorganisation that followed the Reformation seemed to leave Dent's claim to independent parish status stronger than ever. Henry's commissioners had noted in 1509 the existence of a chapel in Garsdale separated by "great daungrous mountaynes" from its “parish church of Dent”. In 1548 the "paryshe of Dent" was said to have its own priest, "besyde the vicar" (of Sedbergh), and was described as “a great wyde paryshe” with “the nomber of houslyng people MD” (i.e. fifteen hundred communicants). Garsdale chapel was again mentioned as a dependency of Dent parish, “beinge in the mounteynez, so that in wynter many tymez ther can nothinge passe betwixt the same and the paroch church”.
Garsdale paid Dent four nobles (£1 6s 8d) per year towards the stipend of Dent's priest, and was liable for a quarter share of the costs of keeping Dent church in good repair. But around 1560 Garsdale was licensed to bury its own dead instead of carrying them to Dent churchyard by way of the "corpse roads" over Rise Hill, and soon the Garsdale men were objecting to payments which seemed to them to have become obsolete. The Bishop of Chester (into whose diocese the churches had been moved at the Reformation) ruled in Dent's favour, but the Garsdalesmen now proved as obstinate as the Dentdalesmen had been towards Coverham. Where Dent had claimed exemption of payments by virtue of its de facto independence from Sedbergh, Garsdale now claimed exemption by virtue of its independence from Dent. Meanwhile, the old Norman church began to crumble. In 1590 the chancel was reported to be in a state of decay, and in 1602 Trinity College obtained a court order requiring the 24 sidesmen to take action to reverse its "very ruinous " condition.
Garsdale continued to defy the bishop's order to pay up, and Dent evidently took the view that if Garsdale men wouldn't dip into their pockets, nor would they. In 1615 a “vehement wind” carried away the lead on the chancel roof, and the bishop's visitation book of 1622 records that neither surplice nor a serviceable prayer book were to be found on the premises. By 1633 the church floor was still unpaved, consisting of beaten earth covered with rushes. The dispute with Garsdale rumbled on till 1678 when, after a final payment of £24 to cover arrears, Garsdale was at last released from contributing towards its ancient parent church over the "great high mountaynes". Seven years later, in 1685, the churchwardens were still in trouble for putting off repairs, lead having meanwhile gone missing from the roof and the porch having begun to lean at a dangerous angle.
Vicar in jail
Nor was it only the church fabric which was in disrepair. Dent's own mother church at Sedbergh was in turmoil when the vicar, Giles Wigginton, was jailed in 1581 for attacking the bishops and calling for their overthrow in the interests of church reform! Released five years later from the White Lion jail, London, where he had been "loaded with irons and treated with great severity", Wigginton returned to Sedbergh where he is said to have gathered a separatist congregation of 140 followers. He was returned to jail in 1587, released again in 1592, and even managed to get reinstated as vicar.
Dent also had its problems. In 1595 three churchwardens were accused of appropriating the communion money, and a fourth, Leonard Sigiswicke or Sedgwick, caused tongues to wag by allowing dancing in church and, it was said, personally assisting in dressing the maids! The minister, Thomas Man, was reported to his bishop for neglecting preaching, never catechising the young, and avoiding occasions such as perambulations when he was expected to provide customary hospitality!
Despite all this confusion, however, real progress was made on at least one front. From the 1540s on, Dent church had housed a small school for the children of Dent and Garsdale families, financed by an endowment of £10 from King Edward VI, augmented by fee-farm rent charges on ten farms in Kirthwaite (Cowgill). In 1603 it was decided to build a new grammar school in Dent churchyard, financed not only by the fee-farm rents but by a new royal endowment. In 1604 Richard Leake, curate of Dent, presided as the Free Grammar School of King James, Dent, opened its doors for the first time. They remained open for nearly three hundred years, until 1896. Today the school is two private dwellings, still owned by the Grammar School Governors, who continue to apply its rents, and those from other small properties in the dale, to educational purposes.
The church also made practical provision for the poor. There were the usual bread and linen charities common to most rural parishes, but Dent's speciality was the requirement that the churchwardens provide four bulls for servicing the local cows, at a fee which went into the poor fund. Most of the ancient charities – though not the bulls' services – survive today, amalgamated in the Dent Combined Charities.
The family quarrels of the sister communities of Dent, Sedbergh and Garsdale, however, were nothing compared with the national quarrel which erupted into civil war in 1642. Dent, a royal manor since Elizabethan times, at first sided with "King and Church" under its aged curate John Tenant, who succeeded Leake about 1608 and was still in place when hostilities commenced. But many local families were split. The Trotters of High Hall armed themselves against Parliamentarian attack in 1648, and a force of a hundred Royalist troops was held prisoner in Dent church till their leader, Henry Thistlethwaite, escaped and persuaded some of the Roundheads to change sides. Alexander Hebblethwaite of Gate was a colonel on Parliament's side. The Royalist curate John Tenant was eventually “thrust out” and replaced by the more politically correct William Waller, before the Church of England itself was abolished by Parliament.
The coming of the Quakers
With an eye to the main chance, Dentdalesmen saw an opportunity to revive their ancient tithe strike. It began at Easter 1652 and lasted till Crown and Church were restored in 1660. But Waller faced other problems. Within days of the start of the tithe strike, a radical preacher-reformer named George Fox held a meeting at Stonehouse in Dent, one of the earliest to give rise to the new Quaker movement. Quakers gave the parish church a hard time, heckling at services, deriding the church building as a mere "steeple-house" denouncing Waller and his like as "hireling priests" and giving full backing to the tithe strike. (The vicar of Sedbergh had an even rougher ride, one Quaker convert complaining that the town had fourteen alehouses, with "the priest of the place a common frequenter of them"). Unlike their quiet descendents in later generations, the early Quakers were subversives who strove to turn the world upside down. And the most subversive thing about them was their message that neither Church, State nor Book (the Bible) could command an individual's conscience. The message is still unsettling to those who believe they have authority over others.
So there were some scores to settle when the republic collapsed and England became a kingdom again in 1660, with the Anglican church restored to its former power. The Dent tithe strikers finally lost their case when the ousted royalist, old John Tenant, now 79, was recalled to his former parish to testify that in his day, which had lasted from 1608 to around 1645, Dent was a part of Sedbergh and could not claim exemption from Sedbergh's tithes. The Quakers now faced a bitter persecution from Church and State, and in Dent they were subjected to a relentless thirty year campaign to stamp them out altogether. But they continued to meet in each others' houses (Laning, Gailegarth, Gate, Three Roods, Cowgill, Harbergill, Stonehouse) and the open air (Helms Knott, High House "parrock", Chappel fold, Lea Yeat common and "the Riggs towards Sedbergh") till the Toleration Act gave them freedom to build two new meetinghouses, one in the Laning and one at Lea Yeat, Cowgill, in 1701.
But we do get glimpses of common neighbourliness and charity breaking now and again through official intolerance and bigotry. In 1681 Anthony Mason, a Quaker from Lea Yeat, was fined the huge sum of £120 for failing to attend parish church and for refusing his tithes. On a raw November day the bailiffs were sent up the dale to confiscate his goods for payment of the fine. He was out on the fells, but his wife and five young children watched helplessly as the bailiffs rounded up the seven cows which made up the entire stock of the farm, and began driving them towards Dent market. But one bailiff took pity on the Masons and lagged behind with "one ould cow". As the rest of the herd disappeared over Cowgill bridge, he quietly turned the beast round and drove it home “to help give them a little milk”.
Satires on a Jacobite priest
The 18th century was a less turbulent age. In Dent it was dominated by the long incumbency of the Rev Mark Rumney, no longer styled "minister' but "Perpetual Curate" – a title since abolished, but then one rung above curate and one below vicar, introduced by Queen Anne. According to the geologist Adam Sedgwick, Rumney was "a high-churchman of the old school" a "zealous and conscientious man" who "had little tolerance for those who dissented from the Established Church; and he is said never to have preached without an emphatic use of the words orthodoxy and heterodoxy in some part of his sermon". He was "so staunch a Jacobite that he got into some trouble on the accession of the House of Hanover to the English throne". Sedgwick recalled that a local Quaker "who had some skill in the composition of doggerel verses used to direct his burlesque shafts against the high-churchman, to the great amusement of the inhabitants of Dent. Unhappily these satires are now lost.
Rumney and his immediate successors did succeed, however, in getting the long-neglected church into better order. A start had been made in 1686 when the floors were at last paved, and by 1783 it was reported to the bishop that "the body of the church is kept in good repair by the inhabitants having almost annually contributed considerable sums". But even so, the roof timbers were "broke in several places" and had to be supported by props, and the "steeple or tower was cracked on three sides and bulged alarmingly on the fourth.
So once again there was a major renovation of the whole structure – though it was not to everyone's liking. According to Sedgwick, a Rood-screen and Rood-loft had survived until the 1780s, but these were removed, along with "some curious tabernacle work which ran on the south side of the chancel and bounded a south chancel-aisle". This, thought the old geologist, was a grievous injury to the architectural beauty of the church', but worse followed. The ancient tower, said to have been damaged by an earthquake (the dale runs across the “Dent fault”), was pulled down, “and in its place rose the present clumsy tower – worthless in design; but perhaps claiming some kind regard by the music of its six sweet bells”. The “church battlements” and clerestory were also destroyed, local Kirk Bank flags replacing the old lead roof, "to the ruin of all exterior beauty and symmetry". A low ceiling, below the level of the present upper windows, "violated the whole internal design". The resultant dumpy structure can still be seen in old photographs, but the clerestory was restored in a further renovation a century later, when the old carved pews of the seventeenth century were relegated to the side-aisles, the ancient three-decker pulpit was truncated, and a gallery at the west end was removed – at Sedgwick's own suggestion.
Dent was by now in receipt of "Queen Anne's Bounty", a diversion of funds formerly paid to royal favourites, mistresses and bastards. Two properties, Throstle Hall and Helks, were purchased with Bounty money and rented out to augment church income. Francis Stacey has shown that no fewer than 32 Dentdale properties were purchased in this way by other churches, making the dale indeed a “Bounty-full valley”.
A century of Sedgwicks
Rumney's reign was followed by that of the Sedgwick dynasty, which lasted well over a hundred years. Adam's father, Richard, was “Perpetual Curate” (though Adam called him "vicar") from 1768 and presided over the desecrations which so displeased his son. He was followed by Adam's brother John in 1822, who in turn was succeeded by his son Richard from 1859 to 1885. Adam himself took holy orders, but preferred to take a post as professor of geology at Cambridge. He is commemorated both by a museum which bears his name in Cambridge and by the granite drinking-fountain, carved with his name and dates, at the gates of Dent church.
Rumney had guarded the dale for conformity, but the Sedgwicks saw nonconformity drawing away many of their flock. Just as Quakerism seemed to wane, other forms of dissent made their appearance. After a visit to Dent by Benjamin Ingham in 1743 (when he was met by a volley of stones), the Inghamites, a sect with links to the early Methodists, Moravians and Scottish Sandemanians, built a chapel near the old bridge over Cowgill beck in 1754, and when the enthusiasm which brought them there proved short-lived, it was taken over from time to time by visiting evangelists. One such, George Whitfield, experienced the irreverent humour of the dale's youth. While he preached, they cut off his horse's tail.
Methodist knitters
Wesleyan Methodism was somewhat late in arriving in the dale, the first sorties being made by Jonathan Kershaw of Garsdale around 1803, when he too was welcomed with a volley of "stones, mud and putrid eggs". But a Wesleyan Society was formed by 1806, meeting at first in a bar, then in private houses, then in another barn which was converted into a chapel, and finally, in the Laning meetinghouse abandoned early in the century by the Quakers, which the new occupants substantially rebuilt in 1834. More chapels were built along the length of the dale, one at Deepdale, another at Cowgill and one at Dent Foot in a converted mill building.
According to an account in the Wesleyan Methodist Magazine of February 1835, many who came to hear the preacher brought their knitting with them, but "ere long their hearts were deeply affected with their sinfulness, and in their penitential distress they seemed to forget their work; their needles dropped from their hands to the ground, and a cry extorted from some of them, "What must I do to be saved?" In the parish church, too, the vicar would say "Put down tha' pricks [knitting needles] and let us pray".
About 1840 the break-away Primitive Methodists began holding meetings in Garsdale and some from Dent ventured over the "great high mountain" of Rise Hill to hear them, though sternly forbidden to do so by their orthodox Wesleyan leaders. The "Prims" or Ranters, had few doctrinal differences with the Wesleyans, but they identified much more strongly with working-class causes, to the horror of the national leadership which, like John Wesley himself, was fervently Tory. Those who persisted in supporting the Garsdale radicals were expelled from the Dent fellowship and promptly founded their own Primitive Methodist Society, meeting only a stone's throw away from the Wesleyan chapel in the building which now houses the Meadowside tea-rooms. It is still possible to discern a “PM” picked out in pebbles below the front doorstep. The two strands of Methodism eventually reunited in 1933.
Marching to Zion
The parish church had more than the rival strands of Methodism to contend with. A group of Independents or Congregationalists who had made use of the Inghamite chapel at Cowgill invited the Rev John Hill, Independent pastor at Ravenstonedale, to preach in Dent. In 1809 an Independent church was formed, meeting in an upper room in a house overlooking the eastern entrance of the parish churchyard. The site is now occupied by flower beds. The Rev Seth Kelso was pastor till 1818, and he was followed after a short interval by one of John Hill's converts, James Batty. Like earlier nonconformists in Dent, Batty met with the bad eggs treatment, until he walked all the way from Dent to Pontefract to obtain a magistrates' order permitting him to preach without molestation. Batty was a formidable walker. He thought nothing of preaching in Dent in the morning, walking to Barbon or Cowgill or Garsdale to preach in the afternoon, then walking back to Dent to preach in the evening. He found time to promote Congregationalism in Sedbergh and Hawes, and to supplement his modest stipend by working as a bootmaker.
In 1834 James Batty and his congregation purchased two cottages with a garden and yard in Flintergill, and there a new Zion Chapel was built, largely by voluntary labour. The building was renovated in 1895, and it was probably at this date that the blind windows were painted on the front wall. Batty was succeeded by the Rev William Sedgwick from Ravenstonedale, adding further to Dent's impressive collection of clerical Sedgwicks, though this one was no relation. From about 1910 on, the three nonconformist churches – Wesleyan, Primitive Methodist and Congegational – began combining forces for a joint Sunday service held in each church in turn. At about the same time, two-and-a-half centuries of Quakerism in the dale came to an end as the meetinghouse at Lea Yeat closed, to become first the Cowgill Institute and then a private dwelling.
But we are ahead of ourselves. The early years of the nineteenth century saw a sharp decline in the dale's population as poverty bit hard and both the mill towns of Lancashire and the open spaces of New England generated a flight from the dale. The “hamlet” of Kirthwaite, the upper part of the dale, was especially hard hit and, as Adam Sedgwick wrote, “many of the poorer inhabitants of the hamlet, especially those in the remoter parts of it, were without instruction, of reckless life, and without the common comfort and guidance of social worship in the House of God”. This induced the curate's wife, Mrs Jane Sedgwick, to use the old Inghamite chapel as a mission-house, and in the 1830s it was purchased by trustees led by Adam Sedgwick, pulled down, and replaced by a new Cowgill Chapel, built in a pleasingly unfussy style (thankfully free of the later-Victorian mock-Gothic so beloved by the High Church Oxford Movement) on a beautiful site, and consecrated in 1838.
Unhappily, however, the documents which gave legal force to the creation of a District of Cowgill were lost. In 1864 the Rev Joseph Sumner, perpetual curate of Cowgill, successfully applied to the bishop of Ripon (into whose diocese the church had been moved from Chester) for re-registration, but with a change of name from Cowgill to Kirkthwaite. Kirkthwaite was an ancient name for the upper dale, and Sumner liked its ecclesiastical flavour, kirk being the ancient Norse (and Scots) word for church. The innovation enfuriated Adam Sedgwick, not least because he preferred the then current spelling Kirthwaite, but also because Sumner surreptitiously revived the old boundaries of Kirkthwaite, which gave him a slightly larger district than was originally envisaged for Cowgill. Moreover, the extra territory was stolen from Dent, which improved Mr Sumner's revenue at the expense of the Sedgwick dynasty down dale!
The old geologist eventually used his influence at court – he had been an intimate friend of Prince Albert and a house guest at Balmoral – to have Kirkthwaite changed back to Cowgill and the former boundary line restored. This was done by Act of Parliament, introduced by Gladstone and passed in 1869 at the express command of no less a person than Queen Victoria. Unedifying as this clerical controversy was, it did inspire Sedgwick's Memorial and Supplement, his vivid history of a dales community which remains a classic to this day. Mr Sumner's memorial was his new church school, with the name “Kirkthwaite School” defiantly inscribed over the door in 1866. The inscription is still there, though the school too changed its name to Cowgill in 1906. Dent, meanwhile, had opened its own "National" church school in 1845 in what is now the Memorial Hall, competing with the old grammar school and eventually driving it out of business.
Packed pews
When the one and only national census of church attendances was taken on Sunday March 30 1851, 264 people were recorded as attending the parish church in the morning and 267 in the afternoon, including 130 and 128 children respectively. The Rev John Sedgwick testified that this represented "the usual attendance". At Cowgill chapel 36 adults and 57 children attended in the morning and 67 adults and 61 children in the afternoon. Zion Independent chapel attracted 40 adults and 24 children in the morning, 20 adults in the afternoon and 30 more in the evening, these suspiciously round figures being supplied by "John Stables, Member of the Church".
The Wesleyan chapel offered only an "average" of 65 adults and 15 children at the one morning service, while the Primitive Methodists across the road claimed totals of 40 in the morning, 95 in the afternoon and 100 in the evening. Up-dale at the remaining Quaker meetinghouse at Lea Yeat, 17 met that morning, though John Alderson, the "registering officer" claimed an average attendance of 30.
Altogether, even if we assume that most of those who attended afternoon and evening services were coming to church for the second or third time that day, it seems that some 600 of the dale's 1,630 population – well over one in three – spent part of Sunday in church in the mid nineteenth century. If a substantial number of the 640 attending in the aftemoon and evening were not there in the morning (and this must be true of the Primitive Methodists, whose afternoon and evening meetings were much larger than their morning service), we can assume that half the dale were churchgoers. The census was nevertheless thought to reveal a "sad decline" in church attendances.
After centuries in which it was regarded sometimes as part of Sedbergh parish and sometimes as a parish in its own right, Dent found itself in 1870 divided in two. Dent won its legal separation from Sedbergh, but the District of Cowgill, renamed the District of Kirkthwaite by Mr Sumner and changed back to Cowgill by the wish of Queen Victoria, now became the independent Parish of Cowgill. But as population continued to drain away through the succeeding century, the two parishes shared a single vicar from 1932 and eventually reunited in 1974 as Dent with Cowgill, now in the newly-created diocese of Bradford.
Happy birthdays
On October 30 1988 Cowgill Church was filled for the Festival of Praise and Thanksgiving commemorating its 150th anniversary. Four years earlier, in June 1984, the Methodists had celebrated their 150th, with messages from five former ministers. Both were preceded by community celebrations of Dent church's 900th birthday in 1980 (probably half a century too early for the church as a building, and perhaps five hundred years too late for the church as its people!).
“A thousand ages” has passed like “the watch that ends the night before the rising sun”. In that watch, however, the Christian church in Dent has changed and adapted to new needs and new visions. It is no longer the outlawed Celtic church of Dunawt's subjects, nor the warrior church of his conquerors, nor the superstition-ridden church of the middle ages, nor the squabbling churches of the Reformation, nor the packed church of outwardly respectable Victorian England. But, while flawed like any other human institution, in its heritage of language, music, ceremony and architecture it continues, in its rich variety of forms and diversity of opinion, to celebrate the values of Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love, and to point to an alternative way of living in which swords are turned into ploughshares, the humble are exalted, the mighty are put down from their seats, and the goal is nothing less than a New Jerusalem: one we can still strive to build in Dent's green and pleasant dale.
Incumbents of St Andrew’s, Dent
c 1290 Robert
c1451 John Holme
1505 William Sides
1595 Thomas Man
c1604–1608 Richard Leake
1608–1645 John Tenant
1645–1671 William Waller
1671–1717 T Hunter
1717–1758 Mark Rumney
1758–1768 R Vanbrugh
1768–1822 Richard Sedgwick
1822–1859 John Sedgwick
1859–1885 Richard Sedgwick
1885–1891 J Lewis
1891–1909 J A Hayden
1910–1922 E S Curwen
1922–30 H Blakeney Fynn
1930–1947 H Sparling
1948–1961 S Bennett
1961–1976 Arthur Barker
1976–1985 Malcolm Robinson
1986–1991 A Ormiston
1991 Christopher Mitchell
Before 1870 the incumbent was styled chaplain, parish priest, minister, or perpetual curate; after 1870, vicar.
Incumbents of St John’s, Cowgill
1839–1863 William Matthews
1863–1864 W Cox
1864–1869 J Sumner
1870–1871 E Sale
1871–1879 D Adams
1880–1884 G Towers
1885–1915 R Pickering
1915–1921 R Hewitt
1923–1929 J Bradshaw
1929–1932 W Hedley
From 1932 the vicar of Dent was also vicar of Cowgill. In 1974 the two parishes were amalgamated as Dent-with-Cowgill.
