Muscoates

Muscoates is first mentioned in a 12th-century document. The name derives either from the Old English mūsa cotes, meaning "mouse-ridden cottages", or from an Old Norse personal name Músi.^[1] Muscoates was a township in the ancient parish of Kirkdale,^[2] and became a separate civil parish in 1866.^[3]

Muscoates was a small parish with an area of 1,045 acres (423 ha) and a population of 23 in 1961.^[4]

In 1974 it became part of the new district of Ryedale, and on 1 April 1986 the parish was abolished and merged with Nunnington.^[5] Ryedale was abolished in 2023 and the area is now administered by North Yorkshire Council.

Sir Herbert Read, the poet and art critic, was born at Muscoates in 1893, the son of a farmer. His fantasy novel The Green Child (1935) was described by the critic Geoffrey Wheatcroft in 1993 as "singular, odd, completely original".^[6]