[2][3] To the Normans it was Cucheslaga (recorded as Cucheslage in the Domesday Book)[4] but by the 14th century it was called Quixley after the Lord of the Manor.

[5] For many years Whixley was famous for cherries which were originally cultivated by the friars from the Priory of Knaresborough, and in later times were sold in London at Covent Garden.

[8] The Tancred estate was bought by the West Riding County Council in 1920[9] and, amid much controversy, four good farms were split up into 50 acre smallholdings to provide a living for men returning from military service in the First World War.

Today, under North Yorkshire County Council, most of these small farm houses have been sold and the land is being absorbed into larger land-ownerships, as it was 100 years ago.

It was known as the Inebriates Reformatory but it seems to have rapidly become a dumping ground for orphans, waifs and strays for whom society could find no other place and eventually it became a mental hospital.

Recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086,[11] the Church was burned and destroyed by marauding “Reivers” from the Scottish borders in the 13th and 14th centuries.