Low Ackworth, United Kingdom

The area around Ackworth may have been settled about 500–600 by settlers from modern-day Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands after the departure of the Romans from Britain. The Romans were active around Ackworth, the nearby town of Castleford being the location of Lagentium, a Roman fort. The A639 Roman road to York also runs close by; a Roman milestone was found near its junction with Sandy Gate Lane on the parish boundary with Pontefract. In terms of Christianity, the first church may have appeared in Ackworth between 750 and 800, a well-established tradition being that the monks of Lindisfarne, escaping the Norse invasion, stopped there about 875, bringing with them the body of Saint Cuthbert. Evidence of Norse settlement can also be found locally in place names such as Thorpe Audlin and Grimethorpe, with the Norse term thorpe meaning a small settlement or a farm.

The earliest mention of the village appears in the 1086 Domesday Book: "Manor in Ackworth. Erdulf & Osulf have six carucates of land to be taxed, where there might be five ploughs. Humphry now holds it of Ilbert. [Humphry] himself has there one plough and a half, and fourteen villains, and two boors. There is a Church there, and priest; one mill, of sixteen pence. Value in King Edward's time four pounds, now three pounds. Domesday Book 107. Land of Ilbert de Lacy" According to Domesday, Ilbert de Lacy was Lord of a manor able to employ five ploughs. His vassal was the Humphrey mentioned in the book, who himself owned one-and-a-half ploughs (about a quarter of the manor). The rest was divided between two farmers as Humphry's tenants. De Lacy was a Norman knight, who received land for services to William the Conqueror and built the first earth and timber motte and bailey castle in nearby Pontefract. Domesday suggests Ackworth was small – 14 villagers and two smallholders – but as only heads of families were counted, a likelier population would have been 30–40.

Estate accounts for 1296 showed that Ackworth had developed by then. The Lord had 240 bondsmen working for him and the value of the mill had risen. Adam de Castleford had to pay 10 shillings (£0.5) rent for his land. His wife Isabella founded a Chapel of Our Lady in Ackworth Church in 1333. In 1341 the Inquisitiones Nonarum stated that the only inhabitants of Ackworth were working in agriculture. It has been speculated that the central village cross was erected by the Isabella de Castleford, who built the chapel in the church, which may date it around 1340. The cross itself was listed a grade II building in 1968, with a description as "late medieval", constructed as a "medieval shaft with a Tudor ball on top" and "prominently sited near junction with Pontefract road".

One reason given for erecting the cross was as a memorial to plague victims, possibly of the Black Death of 1349, which would have killed many. The Black Death reached Southern England in 1348 and by 1350 had killed a third of England's population. In nearby Pontefract it was estimated that 40 per cent of the population died. A reminder of how communities communicated and traded despite the plague remains in the Ackworth plague stone, although it is thought that it dates from a further plague outbreak in 1705. Standing at the junction of Sandy Gate Lane on the road into Pontefract, the stone too is a Grade II listed monument. Plague stones were "receptacles for sterilising coins in vinegar, normally at or close to parish boundaries." This suggests that the current location of the plague stone was the outer rim of the parish. The plague in 1645 was said to have killed 153, the bodies being buried in a "burial field... crossed by the footpath from Ackworth to Hundhill." The area had possibly been used for mass burial after a skirmish earlier in the year between Roundhead and Royalist forces during the English Civil War. The bubonic plague of 1645 was not confined to Ackworth: in Leeds over 1,300 people died, and a further 245 were thought to have died "in and around the Wakefield area". One theory was that it had been brought in by civil-war soldiers. Another version was retold by Henry Thompson in A History of Ackworth School in its first 100 years. A well-loved monk went to Rome and became "smitten by the plague and died". The monk, from the priory at Nostell would preach at the medieval cross in the centre of the village and was described as a "noble soul with a kindly heart", admired by young and old alike. After succumbing to the plague in Rome, his body was returned and passed through Ackworth, where "nothing could satisfy the ignorant but faithful love of the old hearers" and the coffin was opened. The village was then stricken with plague and the stone on Castle Syke Hill became "for many months the only contact between them and the outside world". The book relates how "upon that stone the Ackworth purchaser dropped his money into a vessel of water, for which, a few hours afterwards, he found his return in merchandise." Of this the author comments, "We make no idle comment.... We tell the tale as it was told to us."