ASKE MANOR

Identity: confirmed — The registry name and location correspond to the historic manor of Aske near Richmond, whose surviving manorial house is Aske Hall. Historic England identifies Aske Hall as a fifteenth-century pele tower with early additions forming a manor house, and records the medieval ownership of the de Aske family. The Easby-area directory separately identifies Aske Hall as the seat of the lord of the manor and describes the manor of Aske as historically held by the Aske family.
Representative point: 54.42573, -1.72776
Basis: documented_manor_house — Aske Hall, the documented surviving manor house and historic centre of the Aske manor. The coordinate corresponds to OS grid reference NZ 17757 03385 / NZ17760340.
Point confidence: high
Boundary status: representative_point_only
Boundary period: Historical manor; especially documented through the early modern and nineteenth-century estate record
Boundary confidence: none
Boundary basis: Accessible sources establish the manor house and identify Aske as a historic township/manor, but do not provide a sufficiently recoverable perimeter of the medieval or manorial landholding. Estate maps and surveys are known to exist, including a map of the Lordship of Aske from circa 1727, a 1761 map, and an 1813 plan of the Aske and Richmond estates. However, the available evidence does not expose enough mapped boundary geometry to reconstruct a defensible manor polygon. The 1,764-acre figure for Aske township in the 1891 directory is not treated as the manor extent because a township boundary is not automatically identical to the historical manorial boundary.
Sources:
- The National Archives, Aske Manor, record F241251: https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/c/F241251 — Registry record supplied for Aske Manor, associated with Easby, Yorkshire.
- Historic England, Aske Hall, list entry 1157422: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1157422 — Identifies Aske Hall as a Grade I listed building; describes the surviving C15 pele tower and early additions forming the manor house; gives OS grid reference NZ 17757 03385.
- Historic England, Aske Hall park and garden, list entry 1001056: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1001056 — Documents the historic Aske estate, its medieval de Aske ownership, and estate maps from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; describes the boundaries of the later c.165-hectare registered park and garden, which is not assumed to equal the manor.
- Catalogue of British Town Maps, North Riding—Richmond, 1813: https://townmaps.history.ac.uk/townmap/north-riding-richmond-1813/ — Catalogues 'A plan of Aske and Richmond estates' by Thomas Bradley, 1813, held by North Yorkshire Record Office under ZNK M 1/6, with boundaries and landowners shown.
- Directory of North Riding Yorkshire, Easby entry: https://www.bromptononswalehistory.com/_files/ugd/56bb6b_052df8a9a79d4acfa57c892e292c7534.pdf — Describes Aske as a township in Easby parish, states that Aske Hall was the seat of the lord of the manor and sole landowner, and gives the historical township area as 1,764 acres.
- Gatehouse Gazetteer, Aske Hall, Easby near Richmond: https://www.gatehouse-gazetteer.info/English%20sites/2032.html — Identifies Aske Hall as a certain pele tower/manor house, gives OS grid reference NZ17760340 and coordinates 54.42573, -1.72776, and summarises its medieval and post-medieval development.
Warnings / uncertainty:
- The representative point is suitable for locating the manor's documented manorial centre, but it is not a claim that the surviving house footprint represents the full historical manor.
- The later registered park-and-garden boundary and the historic Aske township boundary have not been substituted for the manorial boundary.
- No safe historical manor polygon is returned because the accessible sources catalogue relevant estate maps without supplying enough boundary geometry for a defensible reconstruction.