Night the vicar fell foul of the spirit of Christmas
Squire of Yorkshire’s ‘most perfect village’ tells of tipsy clergyman and his unintelligible midnight sermon
IT HAS often been called Yorkshire’s most perfect village, but as its “squire” took his place at the microphone to deliver his seasonal message, the ghosts of Christmas past returned to haunt him.
Ripley, four miles north of Harrogate on the A61, and dominated by the castle that after seven centuries remains home to the Ingilby family, is on the face of it the very model of English civility.
But the 18 Christmas trees around the estate, its tea room and the Boar’s Head Hotel belie the excess of Christmas spirit sometimes spilled there.
Its present keeper reveals some of its guilty secrets in a somewhat surprising recorded reminiscence that is currently winging its way to members of Harrogate and District Talking Newspaper Association.
Sir Thomas Ingilby, who has owned and managed the Ripley estate since 1974, turns disc jockey at this time of year, delivering an address for the association he has supported for 40 years. If they were expecting a dissertation this time round on the true meaning of Christmas, they may have a rude awakening.
Instead, Sir Thomas regales them with the time the vicar got drunk and of having the door slammed in his face when he went carolling.
“I like to tell anecdotal stories about what’s happened in the castle or around the area,” he told “I wasn’t expecting them to have such a wide audience – the talking newspaper service only reaches a few hundred people.”
His text for this season – concerning events of many years before, he stressed – begins with the time he and his family ventured out to sing carols.
“It usually involves a couple of nights at Ripley, going round all the houses,” he says in the broadcast.
“On one night, my mother, my
Sir Thomas Ingilby, who has managed the estate since 1974.
sisters and I knocked on a door and started singing and a voice from inside told us to go away in no uncertain terms.
“We knocked again and the lady who opened it was absolutely horrified when she saw who she’d turned away.”
No harm was done but it was more than could be said for his second recollection, of a Christmas in the nearby hamlet of Burnt Yates.
“In those days it had two public houses and we always went there on Christmas Eve when they were full and there
He appeared late at the service, battered bruised and concussed.
was a very good spirit. A lot of spirit, actually,” he tells listeners.
“We all used to return somewhat the worse for wear, including the vicar, and on one occasion he left it rather late before setting off back to Ripley for the midnight mass.
“He jumped over a wall by the side of the main road to take
a shortcut across country. But although the wall was only three feet high on one side, it was 6ft deep on the field side.
“He appeared a few minutes late at the service, battered, bruised and very concussed.
“We were never quite sure whether it was the impact of the concussion or the amount
of Christmas cheer that had been consumed that evening which made the sermon almost unintelligible.”
Despite his rather unconventional storytelling technique, or perhaps because of it, Sir Thomas has claimed that it is “a wonderful thing” to be able to reach out to those who
could no longer read printed media.
“When it began we used to read cuttings from the local papers, which was a service not offered any other way,” he said.
“I’ve always loved writing and also speaking to groups of people so these recorded messages fulfil both needs.”