‘Lord of the town’
THIRSK HALL stands close to the towering and embattled flank of St Mary’s Church, a grandee in the list of Yorkshire’s parish churches. Unusually, both buildings lie on the edge of this attractive market town, rather than in its centre. That is because what is today a single settlement was once divided along the line of Cod Beck between ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Thirsk. The former, in which the hall and church stand, occupied the manor of Thirsk, which was in the possession of the Earls of Derby by the 15th century. It was, however, the ‘new’ town that prospered and within which the spacious market place subsequently evolved. Old Thirsk, meanwhile, retained significance as a Parliamentary borough, which returned two MPs. By 1700, there was an electorate of just under 50.
This peculiar arrangement is an important background to the creation of the present hall, which was begun in the 1720s by a mercer of the town, one Ralph Bell. His family had been resident in Thirsk—and neighbouring Sowerby—since at least the 16th century and enjoyed sufficient financial standing to issue currency tokens, stamped with
