Origins
Mashamshire's early history is a matter of conjecture. There are earthworks at Ilton and on Gregory (Saxon for "watchtower") Hill beside the churchyard. There is a field called Standing Stones at Fearby and on Roomer Common there are traces of a Roman marching camp. In addition to these features there are lynchets - a form of early terracing to aid cultivation - on many of the hills in the area.

Masham - Maessa's Ham - probably owed its foundation to the gentle, flood-proof rise on which it stands near an easily fordable part of the River Ure; its proximity to the course of a Roman road and position on the main route from Wensleydale to York.

The Market Place
The huge market place with its beautiful Georgian houses was the site for annual Sheep Fairs with over 80,000 head being sold some years, including animals from the flocks of nearby Fountains and Jervaulx Abbeys. The tradition continues on a smaller scale each September. A plaque by the medieval market cross commemorates the first market charter granted in 1250 followed by two more in 1328 and 1393.

Our Church
St. Mary's church was originally founded, it is thought, in the seventh century and stood somewhere near the present Town Hall on what used to be known as Cockpit Hill. The graveyard, on land near Little Market Place where the public toilets are sited, yielded 36 burials in a recent excavation. The present church - while having some Saxon stone work and the stump of an eighth century prayer cross - is mainly Norman with fifteenth century additions. In the church are two particularly fine memorials: to Marmaduke Wyvill in the North transept and to Abstropus Danby in the South. In the churchyard are buried the hymn writer William Jackson and the artists Julius Caesar Ibbotson and George Cuit. Many gravestones have poems on them.

The Old Peculier
Masham was given to the Minster of York in the medieval period but, as the Archbishop did not wish to make the long journey north to oversee the town's affairs, the parish was designated a Peculier. This meant it had its own ecclesiastical court and governed its own affairs. To this day, the Vicar cannot be ordered to attend the Archbishop but must be formally invited. The Peculier also lives on in the Four and Twenty - the Peculier Court who now function mainly to aid charitable cause - and in the famous Theakston Beer.

Our Breweries
Theakston's Brewery was founded in a hotel on Silver Street in 1827. Following a short period in the ownership of Scottish and Newcastle, heirs of the original founder, Robert Theakston, bought back the company in 2003 and it continues to produce some wonderful beer at its Masham site. In 1992 The Black Sheep Brewery, owned by Paul and Sue Theakston, began brewing ales which in a short period of time have become some of the most popular beers produced by an Independent Brewery.

Further information on the history of Mashamshire is available from the local history section of the town's library, including the excellent book "Days of Yore" by Susan Cunliffe-Lister.