Whatmore Family History

 This one-time Dyson family home is at Rishworth, about six miles south west of  Halifax town centre.  There are records of the house dating back to 1577 when it was in the possession of an Edmund Firth. It was rebuilt in the mid eighteenth century. 

The house appears to have originally belonged to the Firth family and was known as ‘Over Oakes’. It appears to have come to the Wheelwright family when George Firth married Dorothy, the widow of Michael Wheelwright in April 1656. We also know, however, that the will of 1663 of Simeon Dyson of Swifts Place, Soyland,  conveyed to his son Henry, the messuage of Lower Goat House, in tenure of James Houldroyd. This presumably refers to ‘tenancy rights’ rather than ownership.

Lower Goat House    Source: ‘Ancient Halls in and about Halifax’    Arthur Comfort     Published by the ‘Halifax Courier’ about 1913

Henry Dyson born 1636, son of Simeon  appears to be the first of the Dysons to have lived at Lower Goat’s House. Henry was a Quaker and the transfer to him of rights to the messauge of Lower Goats House depended on Henry being ‘conformable and deserving’.

Henry Dyson married Maria Ramsden on 21 January 1660. They are both named in a list of recusants of 1669. In 1689, at Barnsley Sessions, Henry was one of those who petitioned for Lower Goat House to be licensed as a Quaker Meeting House. In January 1695, Henry and others petitioned that the house of Robert Duckworth in Halifax should be licensed for worship there.

Henry and Maria had nine known children:

Timothy 1662

Daniel 1664 – 1718 who married Sarah Smith in 1714 at the Quaker Meeting House, Leeds

Simeon 1666

Easter 1667

Jeremiah  1668

John 1670

Esther 1673 who married Timothy Brogden in 1707

Martha 1675

Henry 1678

Henry born 1636 died on 6 December 1708 and his wife Maria died on 20 December 1717.

Of the male children of Henry and Maria we only know what happened to Jeremiah and Henry.

Jeremiah born 1668 married a Mary Tillotson on 8 July 1719 at the Harwood Wells Quaker meeting House. Their known children were Sarah, Esther 1720 who married John Holden in 1740, Simeon  1721 who married Betty Gledhill on 18 September 1748 at Elland,  Henry 1723, Jeremiah 1725 and Daniel 1728. By 1725, Jeremiah and Mary were living at Soyland. Jeremiah died in 1737.

Henry born 1678 married Mary Overend in 1719. Their children were:

Simeon  1720 – 1792 who married Sarah Mallinson on 22 June 1746 at the Quaker Meeting House, High Flatts, Yorkshire.

Henry 1723 – 1785

John 1725 – 1784 who married Martha Mallinson on 13 January 1745 at Halifax.

Samuel 1729

Samuel 1731

Daniel   1734

It would appeared that the Dyson family moved out of Lower Goat House in 1724, when the owner John Wheelwright died (son of the Michael Wheelwright referred to earlier)and under the terms of his will a school was established there. John Wheelwright was a collector of salt duties and a local landowner. His endowment provided for the education of 20 boys and girls, children of the workers on his estate.

In 1725 a school building was erected and Lower Goat House was then used for boarding pupils and staff. The school building, now the chapel of the greatly expanded Rishworth School, is built of ashlar with a stone slab roof. It consists of five bays of double chamfered, mullioned and transomed windows of eight lights. A tablet on the wall of the building is inscribed:

 ‘John Wheelwright of North Shields in Northumberland, Gentleman, Founded and endowed this School For the Education of his Tenants Children for ever. Anno Domini 1725 Semper honos nomenque tuum laudesque sunt’ 

The Original school at Rishworth, now the Chapel of the enlarged school    Photograph Copyright: Alexander Kapp    Source: Geograph website and reproduced here in accordance with the terms of the site licence which can be viewed at this link:    http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

 A fine new school building was erected in 1824/25. 

The Dyson connection with the school continued for several generations after they had moved from Lower Goat House – a Dyson being a member of the Wheelwright Trust in each generation. The first intake to the school included one of the sons of Ely Dyson of Clay House and later on, in 1731, Ely’s son Jeremiah was sent to Clare College, Cambridge for four years,  at the cost of the Wheelwright Trust.

The 1871 and 1881 censuses show an Eliza Dyson working as an English Mistress at Rishworth Grammar School. Eliza, who was born in about 1838 in Middlesex, was a member of the Dyson family of Clay House, Halifax. She died at the age of 53 in the Halifax Registration District.

The Dyson family of Lower Goats House continued to thrive elsewhere and the line of John Dyson born about 1725 at Lower Goat House, can be traced down to the present day.

 Sources: 

Research by Gordon Dyson of Manchester

‘The Dyson family Part  2’  by E W Crossley   Abstract published in 1918 in the Journal of the Halifax Antiquarian Society

‘Clay House Greetland’   by A T Longbotham   Abstract published in 1934 in the Journal of the Halifax Antiquarian  Society

‘Calderdale Companion’ – the website of Malcolm Bull

‘Ancient Halls in and about Halifax’    Arthur Comfort       Published by the ‘Halifax Courier’ about 1913

‘From Weaver to Web’ – online visual archive of Calderdale History