Ackworth, and the stones it keeps
KENYON PROPERTIES YORKSHIRE LTD is registered in Ackworth, between Pontefract and Hemsworth: a village that already knows how to keep stone, and has the restored posts and crosses to show for it.
A picture made for this page, of the kind of millstone that stands at the village entries. It shows no building in our care.
Kept in the villageFour stones Ackworth looks after
The guide posts
An 1805 guide post on the island where Station Road meets Pontefract Road still gives distances such as Pontefract 3 and Doncaster 13. Ackworth Heritage Group restored it in 2016. Another, dated 1827, stood at Long Lane until a lorry reduced it to powder.
The Village Cross
On the north side of Purston Lane in High Ackworth, a sandstone cross, possibly late medieval, rises from an octagonal base of three high steps about four metres across. It was listed at Grade II in 1968, and the Heritage Group formed in 2000 to restore it after the ball on its top was stolen.
The Plague Stone
Probably the base of a late medieval cross, at the junction of Pontefract Road and Sandy Gate Lane. In the plague of 1645 its hollow was filled with vinegar so that coins left in exchange for supplies could be cleaned. It was listed at Grade II in 1988.
The millstones
Millstones stand at the entries to the village. They were made at Ackworth Quarries and sent all over the world; a millstone-cutting machine from Parkers Quarry is now kept in a museum in the north east of England.
Up the road at PontefractA building nobody kept
Pontefract Castle came down on purpose.
The castle was besieged three times between 1644 and 1649. Its garrison surrendered on 24 March 1649, and on 4 April the demolition was ordered, after the town’s own officials had petitioned for it because the castle kept drawing armies to Pontefract. Contractors were paid tower by tower and wall by wall, and the timber, lead and glass were sold.
What stands now is owned by the Duchy of Lancaster and looked after by Wakefield Council. It is the district’s plainest lesson in what happens to stone once nobody is keeping it.
Where we mean to workAckworth outwards
The office is in Ackworth, and the buildings we intend to look after are in the villages and towns within reach of it: High Ackworth, Low Ackworth and Ackworth Moor Top; Featherstone and Purston Jaglin; Pontefract, Darrington and Thorpe Audlin; Hemsworth, South Elmsall, South Kirkby, Upton, Badsworth, Fitzwilliam and Kinsley; and further out Castleford, Knottingley, Normanton and Wakefield. We will not claim to have looked after any building, street or estate until we have.
The companyWhat a new company can say about itself
KENYON PROPERTIES YORKSHIRE LTD was incorporated on 1 September 2026. It has no years of trading behind it, no list of buildings and no testimonials, and this site does not pretend otherwise. What it can show is method: how a building is taken on, how its checks are kept in date, and how a fault is followed to its cause.
We will join a government-approved redress scheme before taking on any building and will name it here when we have. We hold no trade memberships yet and do not claim any. Gas and electrical work is done by registered engineers and qualified electricians we instruct, never by us.
Please use the full name, KENYON PROPERTIES YORKSHIRE LTD: other companies carry similar ones, and they are not this company.
Write to the company at
tenants@That is the company’s registered mailbox, for owners and for the people living in the homes we look after.