Richmond is a market town and civil parish in the district and county of North Yorkshire, England. It is in the Swaledale valley, near the River Swale, and on the eastern edge of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. The town has become a tourist centre for the park. The town's population at the 2011 census was 8,413. The town is from the local government district's administrative centre in Northallerton.
In the Domesday Book of 1086, the area was collected under Yorkshire, the town was in the Gilling Wapentake. After the book it became the centre for wapentakes in the Honour of Richmond for the North Riding of Yorkshire. Under the 1974 reforms, it became the administrative centre of the Richmondshire district in the North Yorkshire non-metropolitan county. The town came under the current district with unitary authority in a 2023 reform.
History
The town of Richemont, in Normandy (now in the Seine-Maritime département of the Upper Normandy region), was the origin of the place name Richmond. It is the most duplicated UK place name, with 56 occurrences worldwide.
Richmond in North Yorkshire was the Honour of Richmond of the Earls of Richmond (or comtes de Richemont), a dignity also held by the Duke of Brittany from 1136 to 1399.
Richmond was founded in 1071 by Alan Rufus, a Breton nobleman, on lands granted to him by William the Conqueror, though it was called Hindrelag initially. Richmond Castle was completed in 1086 with a keep and walls encompassing the area now known as the Market Place.
Richmond was part of the lands of the earldom of Richmond, which was intermittently held by the Dukes of Brittany until the 14th century. John V, Duke of Brittany, died in 1399, and Henry IV took possession. Richmond is one of a few settlements that was spared from being raided by the Scots during The Great Raid of 1322 by bribing them off. In 1453, the earldom was conferred on Edmund Tudor, and it was merged with the crown when Edmund's son became King Henry VII in 1485. During the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the Covenanter Army led by David Leslie, Lord Newark, took over the castle, and conflict ensued between local Catholics and Scottish Presbyterians.
In 1608, Robert Willance became the first alderman of Richmond, two years prior in 1606, whilst hunting on the nearby Whitcliffe Scar, the horse Willance was riding became nervous when thick mist descended, bolting over the edge and falling over to the valley floor, Willance survived this fall with a broken leg and erected a monument on top of the cliff as a show of gratitude for his survival. Willance died in 1616.
The prosperity of the medieval town and centre of the Swaledale wool industry greatly increased in the late 17th and 18th centuries with the burgeoning lead mining industry in nearby Arkengarthdale. It is from this period that the town's Georgian architecture originates, the most notable examples of which are to be found on Newbiggin and in Frenchgate. One of Europe's first gas works was built in the town in 1830. A permanent military presence was established in the town with the completion of Richmond Barracks in 1877.
During the First World War, Richmond's own Green Howards Regiment raised 24 battalions for the war effort, the castle assumed a role as a barracks and training camp for new recruits and members of the Non-Combatant Corps, in 1915, the first troops occupied the area south of Richmond in what was to become Catterick Camp, the planning of which was commissioned by Lord Baden Powell during his residence at the town's barracks.
In 1916, a group of "absolutist" conscientious objectors known as the Richmond Sixteen were held at the castle after refusing to undertake even non-combatant military duties. After being transported to France, they were court-martialled and formally sentenced to be executed by firing squad, but this sentence was immediately commuted to ten years' penal servitude, and the men were eventually released in 1919. Richmond Castle's 19th-century cell block continued to be used to house prisoners into the Second World War.
In June 1927, Richmond was a centre line of totality during a solar eclipse, the event is marked with a plaque at the top of Reeth Road.