of the manor of Cononley having been acquired by the Earls of Cumberland. Many manor court rolls have also been preserved and some 40 of these have now been published, giving an insight into many of the concerns of Cononley people from 1518 to 1852. The financial difficulties of George Clifford, 3rd. Earl of Cumberland benefited prosperous Cononley farmers. A number of these men were able to purchase very long leases and effectively become owners of their farms. This process also left its mark on the village because these better off inhabitants were able to begin to rebuild their houses in stone. Milton House, once called Sawley House, bears the date 1635. However, it and other nearby houses e.g. Bradleys Farm and The New Inn (in which a fragment of a timber cruck frame has been uncovered) may well date, at least in part, from an earlier century. A succession of these successful farming families dominated land ownership in the village in the 17th and 18th centuries. These included the Sawley and Bradley families, the Tillotson family and a number of branches of the Laycock family. Roger Swire became a land owner in Cononley about 1627 and by the later 18th century his family had come to dominate property ownership in the village. The Swire family and Cononley Hall The Swire Family lived at Cononley Hall from the 17th to the 19th centuries. An existent date stone, evidently moved from its original position and possibly recut bears the date 1683. A second date stone for 1680, probably removed when ancillary buildings were demolished about 1930, is now owned by members of the current Swire family. These facts, in addition to the style of the building, suggest that the oldest part of the present Hall was built in the 1680s for Samuel and Elizabeth Swire. Similar houses in the Airedale often have three gables and the same maybe true of the 17th century Cononley Hall. The cellars may survive from an earlier building on the site. According to John William Moorhouse, who could have been present, during alterations to the building in 1903 a 'secret passage' was found near the large fireplace on the ground floor of 'The Old Hall'. The discovery was linked to a earlier story that a Jacobite kinsman of the then owners, another Samuel and Elizabeth Swire, had escaped from the hall through such a passage in