Banks Hall

This house, which was formerly called Micklethwaite or The Bank, the residence since 1851 of the Misses Frances and Maria Spencer-Stanhope, was for many years the seat of one of the branches of the Greene family. It is pleasantly situate about a mile to the southwest from the village of Cawthorne, the house facing south and east.

A Pedigree of the Greene family from the sixteenth century 36 Henry VIII.-is given in Hunter down to a Samuel Green, of the Bank, living there in 1733 whom we shall find erecting a monument in the Church in that year to his “ancestors and relations.”

There is a “Thomas Greene of Cawthorne in com. Ebor. to whom “Richard St. George, Esq., Norroy K. of Armes granted the coate “and crest here exprest, 6 Oct., 1612,” being the same as those allowed to William Greene of Micklethwaite in 1666.

“Greene of Bancke. Pomfret, 7 April, 1666.” In the Pedigree at this Herald’s Visitation held as above by the illustrious Sir William Dugdale, “ Ralphe Greene of Micklethwayt in the Parish of Cawthorne in Com. Ebor. 36 Hen. 8.” is given as having a son William, who married the daughter of George Cressy of Elmhirst in Cawthorne, and had an elder son John Greene of Elmhirst; a second son Richard, “of Micklethwayt, vulgo Bancke, in ye Parish of “Calthorne,” and a daughter Mary, wife of Thomas Barnby, of Barnby, Esq. Richard’s son William married at Silkstone, June 10, :1654, Mary daughter of Michael Portington and his wife, who was a daughter of Matthew Wentworth, of Bretton, Esq. He is given “aetat. 33 annor., 7 April, 1616,” his “son and heire William, aetat. 9.”

The Thomas Greene of Cawthorne mentioned above is of another branch of this family whose pedigree is given in Hunter from a Simon Greene in the sixteenth century to the Visitation in 1612. One of this family, a Greene of Thundercliffe Grange, in Ecclesfleld, had his coat-of-arms allowed at Doncaster, 3 Aug., 1665, the Wentworths’ of Woolley being recognised on the 5th “at Barnesley,” and the Spencers’ on the 4th at Doncaster. We shall find the name of Greene among the benefactors to the Living of Cawthorne. Early in the seventeenth century “William Greene land belonging “to Elmhirst”is given as 203 acres; “Mr. Greene land” of Micklethwayt as 54 acres, and in 1663 as 362 acres.

The Banks estate was sold about the middle of last century to Mr. Fawkes of Farnley, and was added by purchase to the Cannon Hall estate in 1826.

Banks Hall has in the present century been the residence of Mr Thomas Wilson, Mr. Richard Thorp, and Mr. Thomas Ridley, of Northumberland, who tried the experiment of “gentleman~farming” there without much success. It was during the eleven years that it was occupied by Mr. Thomas Wilson, a man of conspicuous taste and ability, son of Mr. Daniel Wilson, of Barnby Furnace, that the grounds were laid out in their present form. After the heavy losses he suffered through unsuccessful mining operations, he was for many years connected with the Aire and Calder Navigation Company