Welcome to the Stanwick St John village website. Stanwick and Carlton today Compared to our close neighbour Aldbrough, we are a pair of very small villages, associated by sharing a Parish Council* of five persons who meet four times a year. The total population is around 100, living either in scattered farms and houses or close to the two sites of now defunct estates - Stanwick Hall and Carlton Hall. Many of the dwellings are situated in and around the surviving walls and gardens of these estates (both large houses were demolished in 1923 - see 'The Lost Hall' on this website); some were built earlier by the estate owners for their staff - or the horses. Others have since appeared as plots have changed hands. Development opportunities are severely restricted particularly in Stanwick since we are surrounded by the Brigantian earthwork 'Stanwick Camp' which is a Scheduled Monument. This means that certain building work has to be supervised by an archaeologist and some is forbidden entirely. There is no public ‘centre’ to either hamlet except it be St John the Baptist’s Church at Stanwick and its immediate surroundings. (When we decided to mark the millennium with a public seat, its position was dictated by the existence of a small triangle of grass between lych gate and bridge, luckily facing south, which seemed to belong to nobody.) | 
Stanwick St John All this has permitted a remarkable sense of peace and quiet; the only road traversing the parish is a third class one, narrow and winding. The adjacent parish of Forcett still has its old manor house, Forcett Hall, with its parkland and lake, nowadays open for concerts. Development has been restricted there also, resulting in a countryside of farms of arable and pasture land, whose peace is only broken by the larger farm machinery or the luckily infrequent scream of jets from the airbase at Leeming about 12 miles away. *Not to be confused with the Parish Church Council, whose job it is to look after the church in the adjacent village of Aldbrough St John and the burial ground - still in use - around our church. For non- residents, Stanwick St John is pronounced "Stannik Sent Jon" - the "w" is silent. (In the air photo, which looks north, the nuclear village is clear with the church in the middle distance and Kirkbridge courtyard opposite. In the foreground are the residual large (converted) stable buildings and the original gardens which are now private dwelling areas, with the lodge house to the right. Running right from the top of the picture is the tree-lined ancient embankment of 'Stanwick Camp'. Carlton is beyond the area of the picture to the top right) |
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Stanwick St John 
