Welcome to the Stanwick St John village website. Stanwick and Carlton today Compared
to our close neighbour Aldbrough, we are a pair of very small villages,
associated by sharing a Parish Council* of five persons who meet four
times a year. The total population is around 100, living either in
scattered farms and houses or close to the two sites of now defunct
estates - Stanwick Hall and Carlton Hall. Many
of the dwellings are situated in and around the surviving walls and
gardens of these estates (both large houses were demolished in 1925 -
see 'The Lost Hall' on this website); some were built earlier by the
estate owners for their staff - or the horses. Others have since
appeared as plots have changed hands. Development opportunities are
severely restricted particularly in Stanwick since we are surrounded by
the Brigantian earthwork which is a Scheduled Monument. This means that
certain building work has to be supervised by an archaeologist and some
is forbidden entirely. There
is no public ‘centre’ to either hamlet except it be St John the
Baptist’s Church at Stanwick and its immediate surroundings. (When we
decided to mark the millennium with a public seat, its position was
dictated by the existence of a small triangle of grass between lych
gate and bridge, luckily facing south, which seemed to belong to
nobody.) | 
Stanwick St John All
this has permitted a remarkable sense of peace and quiet; the only road
traversing the parish is a third class one, narrow and winding. The
adjacent parish of Forcett still has its old manor house, Forcett Hall,
with its parkland and lake, nowadays open for concerts. Development has
been restricted there also, resulting in a countryside of farms of
arable and pasture land, whose peace is only broken by the larger farm
machinery or the luckily infrequent scream of jets from the airbase at
Leeming about 12 miles away. *Not to be
confused with the Parish Church Council, whose job it is to look after
the church in the adjacent village of Aldbrough St John and the burial
ground - still in use - around our church. For non- residents, Stanwick St John is pronounced "Stannik Sent Jon" - the "w" is silent. (In
the air photo, which looks north, the nuclear village is clear with the
church in the middle distance and Kirkbridge courtyard opposite. In the
foreground are the residual large (converted) stable buildings and the
original gardens which are now private dwelling areas, with the lodge
house to the right. Running right from the top of the picture is the
tree-lined ancient embankment of 'Stanwick Fort'. Carlton is beyond the area of the picture to the top right) |
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Recent Work at Stanwick