Bilton-in-Ainsty

St Helen's Church is a Grade I listed building.[7] Standing at the crossroads with the main road, it was built in the Norman style in 1166. It was associated with the Syningthwaite Cistercian nunnery founded about the same time and dissolved in 1535. The church underwent restoration around 1870 under the direction of George Gilbert Scott.[2] It contains two medieval sheela na gig figurative carvings, as well as a carving of a mermaid pulling her tresses, several corbels, a cross from the Anglo-Saxon period, and other carved fragments.[8]

Bilton Hall became a Grade II listed building in 1966, cited as a "small country house. Early-mid C18 with extensions and alterations c. 1865."[9] Also listed Grade II at that time was a private house known as Bilton Brow. It has a style similar to the additions to Bilton Hall.[10]

One building converted to residential use is an 1845 Wesleyan chapel and Sunday school.[11] The village school, likewise Grade II listed and converted to residential use, was founded by Hall Plumer in 1801, closed in 1928, and then served as a village hall until 1973.[12]

A Bronze Age hoard was discovered on Bilton Moor, pointing to prehistoric habitation. Bilton is an Anglo-Saxon name meaning Bilo's or Billa's Homestead. Ainsty was the name of the wapentake. The village appears in the Domesday Book in 1086 as Biletone of the Annesti (Bilton in Ainsty). The parish registers go back in 1571 and record for 1644 the burial of several soldiers killed in the nearby Battle of Marston Moor, after which some Royalist prisoners were held in the church. Bilton Hall and its manor passed to the Plumer family in the 18th century, who established a school in 1801.[11]

John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870–72) described Bilton, then including not only Bickerton, but Tockwith, as follows: "BILTON, a township, a parish, and a subdistrict in the district of Tadcaster, W. R. Yorkshire. The township lies on the York and High Harrogate railway, near Hammerton station, 5 miles ENE of Wetherby; and has a post office under York. Acres, 1,460.-Real property, £2,606. Pop., 242. Houses, 44. The parish includes also the townships of Bickerton and Tockwith. Acres, 4,150. Real property, £6,894. Pop., 926 Houses, 201. A Cistercian nunnery was founded here, at Symingthwaite, about 1,160, by Bertram de Haget. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of York Value. £300.* Patron, the Prebendary of Bilton. Tockwith was made a separate benefice in 1867. There are two Wesleyan chapels and an endowed school.-The subdistrict comprises two parishes and two parts. Pop., 1,493."[13]