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Royston
Parish Church of St John the Baptist
RoystonLocation within South Yorkshire
Population	10,728 (2011 census)
OS grid reference	SE3511
Metropolitan borough	Barnsley
Metropolitan county	South Yorkshire
Region	Yorkshire and the Humber
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	BARNSLEY
Postcode district	S71
Dialling code	01226
Police	South Yorkshire
Fire	South Yorkshire
Ambulance	Yorkshire
UK Parliament	Barnsley North
List of places UK England Yorkshire 53°37′N 1°27′W / 53.61°N 1.45°W / 53.61; -1.45

Royston is a suburban village within the Metropolitan borough of Barnsley, in South Yorkshire, England. Historically, the village formed part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, but was incorporated into the Metropolitan borough of Barnsley in 1974 and is now on the border with West Yorkshire. It is part of the Barnsley Central borough constituency, and has a population of 10,728. It is situated 4 miles (6.4 km) north-east of Barnsley, and 6 miles (9.7 km) south-east of Wakefield.

History

The village is recorded in the Domesday Book as Rorestone with the name deriving from Hror's or Roarr's farm /settlement (Hror/Roarr-s-tun). The village was in the wapentake of Staincross.

Originally a farming village, Royston joined the Industrial Revolution with the construction in the 1790s of the Barnsley Canal, and later a branch of the Midland Railway. Both are now disused.

Royston had a colliery called Monckton Colliery (1878–1966).This was replaced by Royston Drift Mine. There was also, a clay works and brick works but these are all now closed, although a coke works operated until recently on the mine site processing coal brought in by road. Royston Drift Mine opened in 1975 and closed (after a relatively short period in coal mining terms) 14 years later in 1989. The site is now the site of Rabbit Ings Country Park, which is now home to all five species of owls to be found in Britain.

A large shirt factory with the brandname Valusta provided local employment from the 1940s through to the 1980s. Burberrys also had a factory on Midland Road

Geography

Royston lies on the Barnsley Canal, and on the intersection of the B6132 and B6428 roads, due north of Monk Bretton at an elevation of around 246 feet (75 m) above sea level. The Trans Pennine Trail runs through Royston along the canal bank. The parish is part of the diocese of Leeds.

Landmarks

The churches in Royston include the Anglican parish church of St John the Baptist, Bethel Church, the Royston Methodist Church, and Our Lady and St Joseph, a Roman Catholic church.

The parish church of St John the Baptist was built about the year 1234 and has a clock, a sundial, a ring of eight bells and is now grade I listed. The church is a notable location in Royston as it is one of a few churches in England with an oriel window, and was used a navigational landmark for guiding travellers.

Notable people

Harry “Shake” Earnshaw was a miner turned racing cyclist who in 1938 was acclaimed the British Best All-Rounder. The comedian Charlie Williams was born in Royston in 1927. He played football for Doncaster Rovers and later found fame as one of the comedians on the TV programme The Comedians.

The mountaineer Andy Cave originates from Royston, and was a coal miner until the 1984–85 miners' strike, at which point he dedicated himself to mountaineering. He is also notable for his research into the dialect of Yorkshire pit villages. His 2001 doctorate stated that Royston had a slightly different accent to the surrounding villages, as many of the miners who came to work at Monckton Colliery on its opening travelled from the Black Country, where several mines had closed. This hypothesis was later tested by Kate Burland, who analysed certain vowel sounds in Royston, Wakefield and Barnsley. She found that Wakefield and Barnsley residents had very similar pronunciations for the sounds under consideration, whereas Royston residents had different pronunciations that were more similar to those associated with the Midlands. Yorkshire cricketer Norman Yardley lived in Royston at the Grove, which is now owned by Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council.

Football player and manager Ernie Morgan was born in Royston.

See also

• List of Yorkshire Pits
• Royston and Notton railway station (closed 1968)
• Notton and Royston railway station (closed 1930).
• Listed buildings in Royston, South Yorkshire

References

1. ^ UK Census (2011). "Local Area Report – Royston Ward (as of 2011) (E05000992)". Nomis. Office for National Statistics. Retrieved 12 December 2019.
2. "Genuki: ROYSTON: Geographical and Historical information from the year 1868., Yorkshire (West Riding)". www.genuki.org.uk. Retrieved 12 December 2019.
3. "Royston | Domesday Book". opendomesday.org. Retrieved 12 December 2019.
4. Ekwall, Eilert (1960). The concise Oxford dictionary of English place-names (4 ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 395. ISBN 0-19-869103-3.
5. Smith, Albert H. (1961). The place-names of the West Riding of Yorkshire; 1. Lower & Upper Strafforth and Staincross Wapentakes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 285. OCLC 174292315.
6. "Roydon – Rudyard | British History Online". www.british-history.ac.uk. Retrieved 12 December 2019.
7. "Barnsley Coalfield". nmrs.org.uk. Retrieved 12 December 2019.
8. "Former pit home to five owl species". BBC News. 19 March 2013. Retrieved 12 December 2019.
9. Glister, Roger (2004). The forgotten canals of Yorkshire : Wakefield to Swinton via Barnsley. The Barnsley and Dearne & Dove canals. Barnsley: Wharncliffe. p. 16. ISBN 1-903425-38-7.
10. "Trail Trips – Old Moor to Old Royston" (PDF). transpenninetrail.org.uk/leaflet-downloads/. Retrieved 12 December 2019.
11. "OVER-VIEW FOR THE UNITED BENEFICE OF ROYSTON ST THE JOHN BAPTIST AND FELKIRK ST PETER'S" (PDF). leeds.anglican.org. p. 3. Retrieved 12 December 2019.
12. Historic England. "Church of St John The Baptist (Grade I) (1151127)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 12 December 2019.
13. Pevsner, Nikolaus (2001). Yorkshire : the West Riding (2 ed.). London: Penguin Books. p. 424. ISBN 0-14-071017-5.
14. "St John the Baptist, Church Street". historicengland.org.uk. Historic England. Retrieved 12 December 2019.
15. "Historic Rose Bowl is unearthed – Barnsley News from the Barnsley Chronicle". Barnsley Chronicle. 8 June 2018. Retrieved 12 December 2019.
16. Vamplew, Wray. "Williams, Charles Adolphus ". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/97423. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
17. Cave, Andy (2006). Learning to breathe. London: Arrow. pp. x–xiv. ISBN 9780099472667.
18. Cave, Andrew (2001). "Language variety and communicative style as local and subcultural identity in a South Yorkshire coal mining community". The University of Sheffield. Retrieved 21 July 2013.
19. Burland, Kate (2017). "11: Where the black country meets 'black Barnsley': dialect variation and identity in an ex-mining community of Barnsley". In Montgomery, Chris; Moore, Emma (eds.). Language and a sense of place : studies in language and region. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 234–257. ISBN 9781107098718.
20. Triggs, Roger (2001). The Men Who Made Gillingham Football Club. Tempus Publishing Ltd. p. 226. ISBN 0-7524-2243-X.

External links

• Royston history project
• The Ancient Parish of Royston.

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