Until the first half of the 19th century, Nun Monkton villagers annually performed a ceremony of digging up, parading, and reburying a statue supposed to represent St Peter, the village's patron saint. The custom is said to have been stopped by a vicar who regarded it as a pagan survival. The fullest modern account of it seems to be given in the adjudication ruling by A.A.Baden Fuller which ruled that the village common was a green in 1974. Fuller writes as follows:,A.A. Baden Fuller; Decision : In the Matter of the Common or The Green and Moor End, Nun Monkton, Nidderdale Rural District Council Yorkshire West Riding Reference No 45/D/23-28 11 February 1974, p.21.
