Monk Bretton
| Monk Bretton | |
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 View of Monk Bretton High Street, featuring the ancient Butter Cross |
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 Monk Bretton
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| Monk Bretton shown within South Yorkshire | |
| OS grid reference | SK5198 |
| Metropolitan borough | |
| Metropolitan county | |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | BARNSLEY |
| Postcode district | S71 |
| Dialling code | 01226 |
| Police | South Yorkshire |
| Fire | South Yorkshire |
| Ambulance | Yorkshire |
| EU Parliament | Yorkshire and the Humber |
| UK Parliament | |
Monk Bretton is a village in the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley in South Yorkshire, England. It lies approximately two miles north-east from Barnsley town centre.
Monk Bretton has been a settlement since medieval times and was originally known as just 'Bretton'. It is sometimes thought to have taken its name from the twelfth-century Adam fitz Swain de Bretton, whose family owned much land in the area and who also founded Monk Bretton Priory. However, in the Domesday Book of 1086 the area is already known as Brettone, and the name may have originally meant 'Farmstead of the Britons', suggesting that a remnant of the old Romano-British population may have lived here into the Anglo-Saxon period. According to Domesday Book, the local Saxon lord in 1066 had been an individual called Wulfmer, who by 1086 had been replaced by a Norman lord, Illbert de Lacey, a major landholder associated with many other locations in the county. By 1225 the village was referred to as Munkebretton, ‘munke’ referring to the monks of the nearby Priory.
In 1444, Sir William de Bretton gave to Thomas Haryngton, esquire, and other trustees, lands and tenements in Monk Bretton, which his father and grandfather had leased to the prior and convent for a term of years.
The mediaeval village cross, today known as the ‘Butter Cross’, still survives, standing at the junction of High Street and Cross Street. This precious monument had the go ahead for a traffic island to protect it in 2011. The scheme, costing £106,000 also saw the road junction widened for buses and other large vehicles to pass on the correct side of the road rather than the opposite as in previous years. The cross may have had a social as well as a religious function, a place to meet and hear news. The village park also shows traces of mediaeval ridge and furrow cultivation.
An act of 1609 gave all freeholders of Monk Bretton manorial rights and, since it was not repealed, technically everyone who owns freehold property or land is a ‘lord’ of the village.
On Burton Bank is a Quaker burial ground dating from the 1650s. The land was donated by a local benefactor, George Ellis, and the first recorded burial on the site took place in 1657. Later a small meeting house was erected, which became a focus for local Quakers up until the 19th century. An almshouse was founded in 1654 by a Dame Mary Talbot and was still in existence 180 years later.
Although the nearby Priory formed a Christian community (until dissolution by Henry VIII), Monk Bretton did not possess a church until 1838. The village formed part of the extensive parish of Royston. In 1838 the foundation stone for the first church was laid on a site donated by Sir George Wombwell, at the corner of Cross Street and Burton Road. A new chapelry district, separating Monk Bretton (with Cudworth) from Royston parish and enabling 'baptisms, churchings and burials', was created by Queen Victoria by an order in Council on 22 July 1843. The first church was replaced (on the same site) by the present St Paul's Church in 1878. The church, built in the late Decorated style, is now a grade II listed building. The churchyard contains 16 burials from the 1866 Oaks Colliery explosion.
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