Hickson Genealogy

Extracts about members of the Pullan / Pulleyn family

• In 1672 there were 108 householders in Otley who paid the tax for their fires or hearth-stones. Among the principal contributors was Seth Pullan, 7; Mr Pullan, 5. See Thoresby Soc. Pub., vol. iv., p. 26-27.
• In a church, unnamed, there is a portion of an old memorial tablet (date about 1640) to Wm. Vasasour, Esq., of Stead Hall in the township of Burnley. Mary Pulleyn was his sole heiress and there is in the choir a tablet erected to Thomas Pulleyn, Esq., of Burley Hall, who died in 1759.
• Early in the reign of Elizabeth I there was a dispute as to the bounds of the common of Leathley and an action was entered against the Rev. Thos. Holme, rector, and the inhabitants of Leathley, touching the boundaries,as some encroachment appears to have been made on the Royal Forest. In 1575 the depositions of some old men were taken at Lindley by Sir Wm. Ingleby, Kt., Chr. Mather, John Pulleyn and John Waterhouse.
• The manor of Burley came to the Middletons and from them was purchased by John Pulleyn, who died in 1644. The Pulleyns long resided at the old Hall. They had already resided in this part of Yorkshire for several centuries, and their name occurs in Fewston parish as early as the Poll Tax of 1379. There are at least three distinct branches of the family, doubtless all of one stock, namely of Fewston, Killinghall or Ripley and Scotton and from the last mentioned descends the Pulleyns of Burley. The celebrated Dr. Samuel Pulleyn, first Master of the Leeds Grammar School and afterwards Archbishop of Tuam, was the son of the Rev. William Pulleyn, rector of Ripley (1583-1632) by his first wife Joan, daughter of George Sheffield, of Bothams in the parish of Fewston. Archbishop Pulleyn married a daughter of the Rev. Alex. Cooke, vicar of Leeds, whose sister was the wife of Archbishop Bramhall, of Armagh, who, by the way was born at Pontefract in 1593. A cousin of Archbishop Bramhall, I may add, was the Rev. George Walker, a native of Bingley, Co York and senior rector of Donoughmore, Co Tyrone, who was the father of the celebrated hero-priest, the Rev. George Walker, D.D., governor of Derry in the famous siege of 1689, against the enemies of William and the Faith, whose great monument, a fluted column eighty-one feet high, surmounted by a statue of Walker, stands in the centre of the Royal Bastion in the city of Derry.
• The above John Pulleyn, of Burley, was the son of John Pulleyn of Scotton, by Mary his wife, daughter of Henry Tempest. Thomas Pulleyn, grandson of John, who died in 1644, married Anne, only daughter and heiress of John Fairfax of Menston, and their son Thomas, who died in 1759, aged 58, was for many years Clerk of the Peace for the West Riding. By his first wife, Frances Hammond, he left a daughter, Frances, who married the Rev. Thomas Mosley, M.A., rector of Stonegrave, in Ryedale, whose son Thos. Pulleyn Mosely, Esq., succeeded to the Burley estates.
• Burley Hall, as mentioned above, is the old manor house and former residence of the Pulleyns. Thomas Pulleyn, as stated, died at Burley in 1759 and his widow Mrs Mary Pulleyn died at the Hall in 1786, aged 82. She was the great-granddaughter to Dr. Sterne, Archbishop of York, (ob.1683) her father being Richard Sterne Esq., of Woodhouse in the parish of Halifax. Mrs Pulleyn was also the sister to the wife of Jeremiah Rawson Esq., lord of the manor of Bradford. The hall was almost wholly consumed by fire, through the carelessness of servants, in December 1822 and was rebuilt by the Rev. T.F.Wilson, lord of the manor, who died in 1837.
• William Vavasour, of Stead Hall, (will dated 1642) left Mary Pulleyn his sole heir, his aunt Agnes having married John Pulleyn of Killinghall, and she, the said Mary, by indenture dated 1645, left a charge of £10 per annum to the church at Otley, paid out of a farm at Stead (see copy of the Will of Mary Pulleyn, of Stead, dated 1656.), which in 1748 belonged to Mr Stansfield, of Bradford and was then in the occupation of Wm. Windsor. At this time the Pulleyns owned the manor of Burley (see above) ... The old hall was pulled down some years ago and there are now only two or three dwellings.
• In an indenture made in 1687 when the former property of Farrand or Ferrand House was sold by John Fawcett, of Haverah Park, gent., to Francis Bradley, of Stainburn, in the parish of Kirkby Overblow, yeoman, there is a reference to a piece of newly enclosed land, formerly part of the Upper Wood, which was had in exchange from one Peter Currer by Thomas Farrand, deceased. The dwelling is called Hog Close House and is always described by this name in deeds of transfer and sale down to 1740. There was about eight and a half acres of land attached to it. The property was eventually bought by Major Briggs and on his death, a century ago (ca 1800), was inherited by his daughter Mary, wife of Wm. Pullan, whose grandson, Mr Walter Pullan, of Langbar, is the present owner.
• To the late Major Briggs belonged a good deal of land in the above area, which at the time of his death was divided between his only son, by his first wife, and three daughters, by his second wife. The ekdest daughter, Ellen Briggs, married Matthew Pullan, whose brother, William Pullan of Langbar, married another daughter, Mary; the third, Susannah, being the wife of Benj. Popplewell of Guiseley, master, father of the late Mr. Benj. Briggs Popplewell who built the conspicious Beacon House in 1848 on a site know as Brass Castle. I have a copy of the pedigree of this family should you be interested.
• About two centuries ago Samuel Pullan lived at Hardisty Farm in Langbar. Some of his ancestors, the Kendalls resided at the old farm of Grassgarths in the parish of Weston and also in Nessfield.
• Having just read about warfare in the time of the Civil Wars in England in the 1600s - gunpowder, muskets etc - I see the comment made just over a hundred years ago

  How strange in these days of advanced warfare, of repeater rifles and Luddite shells, to find our ancient fathers ministering to the freedom of England from all foreign enemies, with oyle bottels and rushes for musketts! In 1638 I fond John Pulan was paid 2d. for bringing a letter from York...

Extracts taken from the book Upper Wharfedale: Being a complete account of the history, antiquities and scenery of the picturesque valley of the Wharfe, from Otley to Langstrothdale, by Harry Speight, published 1900.

More details of the Pulleyns can be found in Visitations of the North, from The publications of the Surtees Society established in the year 1884, Volume CXXXIII for the year M.CM.XX, Part 2 published 1921, pages 26 and 126-129 including family trees.