East Riding of Yorkshire

“ King Aethelstan and his men must have marched north by either the Watling Street or the Ermin Street. If the Norse fleet did come into the Humber, he must have come north by the Ermin Street, and his army could hardly have crossed the river under the circumstances. However much, therefore, we should like to assert that the greatest battle of olden times was fought in the East Riding of Yorkshire, it would be wiser not to do so, but to let our somewhat despised sister-county of Lincolnshire have the benefit of the doubt. ”

“ But whether the inhabitants of the East Riding are living together in large communities or in small ones, they live at peace with one another; and any disorderly person who disturbs the peace of the community is quickly brought to book. Now, seeing that man is by nature somewhat inclined to be a quarrelsome animal, how is this very desirable state of affairs brought about?
The answer to this is that all the men, women, and children of the East Riding are living under certain wise laws by which their lives are governed. ”

“ Draw on a map of the East Riding a line from Sewerby, through Driffield and Beverley, to Hessle, and you are drawing the line of the old sea-beach when the upheaval previously mentioned had taken place. This was the shore of a land inhabited by races of animals now found living only in tropical regions. The elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus and hyena ranged the land for food, and bones of these creatures have been found in considerable numbers in the caves that exist at Kirkdale in the North Riding. ”

“ There is little wonder that Rome had become ‘Mistress of the World.’
Let us now see what the Roman road-makers did in East Yorkshire. Stretching north from Londinium ran the 33military highway known in later times as Ermin Street. At Lindum Colonia this branched in two directions, both branches meeting eventually at Eboracum. Skirting the impassable marshes around the meeting-places of the Yorkshire rivers and the Trent, one branch reached Eboracum by bridges or fords across the Trent, the Don, the Aire, and the Wharfe, where now stand Littleborough, Doncaster, Castleford, and Tadcaster. ”

“ For voting purposes, when the elections of these Members of Parliament are held, Hull is split up into three Divisions—East Hull, West Hull, and Central Hull; and the rest of the East Riding is similarly split up into the Buckrose Division, the Holderness Division, and the Howdenshire Division. [71]
In what is known as the House of Lords the East Riding is represented—though not through the process of election—by the Earl of Londesborough, Baron Middleton of Settrington House, Baron Leconfield, Baron Deramore of Heslington Hall, and Baron Nunburnholme of Ferriby Hall. ”

“ Scattered over some of the pleasantest parts of Yorkshire are to be found the ruined homes of men and women who centuries ago formed a very distinct class among the people of our country. These men and women were the monks, friars, and nuns of mediæval England, and their homes were known as monasteries and friaries. ”

“ Again, just as Britain is split up into different counties, each of which makes for itself the by-laws which it considers best, so the East Riding is split up into different portions, each of which makes its own by-laws. ”

“ Of sanctuary knockers still existing the finest is the Norman one on the north door of Durham Cathedral, but nearer home there is a good example on a door of All Saints’ Church at York. That which once existed, and which was so freely used, on a door of Beverley Minster has long ago disappeared, nor is there any known example in the East Riding. ”

“ He granted a charter to the town, constituting it the capital of the East Riding, with many privileges and extraordinary rights; in consequence of which opulent merchants flocked to the town, and it soon began to flourish mightily, and became one of the wealthiest and most important of the trading towns of the realm. He also assigned the manor to the Archbishops of York, who built a palace there on the south of the church ”

“ The majority of the places mentioned in the northern or Barnsdale cycle will be found in the south of the West Riding of Yorkshire, a district bounded by the East Riding and Lincolnshire to the east, Derby and Nottingham shires to the south, and the river Calder to the north. ”

“ So William Stapleton had perforce to remain waiting in Hull.
Meanwhile Robert Aske was sending out letters to the men of the East Riding, and on Sunday, October 8th, the 194town bell at Beverley was set ringing and the townsmen ‘took oathe to the comons.’ Then
with greate noyse, showtes, and cryes they made proclamation everye man to appere at Westwood grene the morrowe after with suche horse and harnes as they had upon payne of death. ”

“ In the East Riding there are eight groups of townships to which the name 314‘Urban District’ is given; these have for their respective centres Cottingham, Driffield, Filey, Hessle, Hornsea, Pocklington, Norton, and Withernsea. There are also twelve groups of townships which we know as ‘Rural Districts.’
LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREAS IN THE EAST RIDING
As you will see from the map on this page, the difference between an Urban and a Rural District is that 315in the latter the people are spread over a much wider area than in the former. ”

“ RIDINGS are the three districts into which from ancient times Yorkshire has been divided for administrative purposes. Formerly there were similar districts in Lindsey in Lincolnshire. The word riding was originally Written as thfithing or thriding, but the initial th has been absorbed in the final th or t of the words north, south, east and west, by which it was normally preceded. Ridings are Scandinavian institutions. ”

“ Little wonder that in mediæval towns were bred foul diseases that broke out at intervals and sometimes carried off half the population in the course of a few months. In 1349—the year of the ‘Black Death’—1361, 1369, and 1451 the Plague visited the East Riding, and there are to be seen in the chancel floor of Holy Trinity Church, Hull, the tombstone and brasses of a merchant named Richard Byll, who was one of its victims in the last-mentioned year. ”

“ The woollen district of the West Riding of Yorkshire is a charming region, a beautiful green hill country, whose elevations grow more rugged towards the West until they reach their highest point in the bold ridge of Blackstone Edge, the watershed between the Irish Sea and the German Ocean. The valleys of the Aire, along which stretches Leeds, and of the Calder, through which the Manchester-Leeds railway runs, are among the most attractive in England, and are strewn in all directions with the factories, villages, and towns. ”

“ Yorkshire (3,208) , the largest county in England, is divided into three Ridings (i. e. thirdings or thirds) for administrative purposes, North, East, and West, with a fourth called the Ainsty, under the jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor and aldermen of York; of these the West is the wealthiest and the most populous; contains a large coal-field, and is the centre of the woollen manufacture of the county; the East being mainly agricultural, with iron-works and shipbuilding-works; and the North mainly pastoral, with industries connected with mining and shipping. Leeds (q. v.) is the largest town. ”

“ It may seem almost superfluous to explain that this book does not deal with the whole of Yorkshire, for it would obviously be impossible to get even a passing glimpse of such a great tract of country in a book of this nature. But I have endeavoured to give my own impressions of much of the beautiful coast-line, and also some idea of the character of the moors and dales of the north-east portion of the county. ”

“ But to see so much of the country at once comes as a surprise to everyone. Stretching inland towards the backbone of England, there is spread out a huge tract of smiling country, covered with a most complex network of hedges, which gradually melt away into the indefinite blue edge of the world where the hills of Wensleydale rise from the plain. Looking across the little town of Guisborough, lying near the shelter of the hills, to the broad sweep of the North Sea, this piece of Yorkshire seems so small that one almost expects to see the Cheviots away in the north. ”

“ Picturesqueness and romance spelt discomfort, and the uneventful road was the one the travellers of old preferred. Thus it is that those p. 221who pursue this route to the North, and know nothing else of Yorkshire, might deny this huge county, more than twice the size of Lincolnshire, the next largest, that variety and beauty which, in fact, we know it to possess. For eighty miles the Great North Road goes through Yorkshire with scarce a hill worthy the name, although towards the north the Hambleton Hills, away to the east, give the views from the road a sullen grandeur. ”

“ Towards the north the descents are equally sudden, and the panorama of the Vale of Pickering, extending from the hills behind Scarborough to Helmsley far away in the west, is most remarkable. Down below lies the circumscribed plain, dead-level except for one or two isolated hillocks. The soil is dark and rich, and there is a marshy appearance everywhere, showing plainly the water-logged condition of the land even at the present day.
There is scarcely a district in England to compare with the Yorkshire Wolds for its remarkable richness in the remains of Early Man. ”

“ So I went about for awhile under a kind of suspicion, or as an unintentional martyr, until one day there met me two gentlemen from Leeds, one of whom declared that he and others, jealous of their county’s reputation, and doubting not to convict me of error, had made diligent inquiry and found to their discomfiture, that the assemblages implied in the villager’s remark, did actually take place within Yorkshire itself. The discovery is not one to be proud of ”

“ It is the stern grandeur of the scarred hillsides and the wide mountainous views from the heights that give this part of Yorkshire such a fascination. If you climb to the top of Rogan's Seat, you have a huge panorama of desolate country spread out before you. The confused jumble of blue-grey mountains to the north-west is beyond the limits of Yorkshire at last, and in their strong embrace those stern Westmorland hills hold the charms of Lakeland.
If one stays in this mountainous region, there are new and exciting walks available for every day. ”

“ The Red Horse is now almost extinct; it occurs as the sign of a house in Bond Street, in an advertisement about a spaniel lost by the Duke of Grafton. [234] By the term red was not meant vermilion; at that time it was the accepted word for what we now call roan. The Bay Horse is a great favourite in Yorkshire; in 1861 there were, in the West Riding alone, not less than seventy-seven inns, taverns, and public-houses, with such a sign, besides innumerable ale-houses. One would expect the Yorkshire Grey more indigenous to that county. ”

“ On wide uplands of chalk the air has a raciness, the sunlight a purity and a sparkle, not to be found in lowlands. There may be no streams, perhaps not even a pond; you may find few large trees, and scarcely any parks; ruined abbeys and even castles may be conspicuously absent, and yet the landscapes have a power of attracting and fascinating. This is exactly the case with the Wolds of Yorkshire, and their characteristics are not unlike the chalk hills of Sussex, or those great expanses of windswept downs, where the weathered monoliths of Stonehenge have resisted sun and storm for ages. ”

“ The castle, or fortified house of the Constables, is reduced to the insignificant ‘Danish Tower’ we have seen. It stands in a meadow, and sheep crop the grass which covers but does not hide the outline of the foundations. Yorkshire being a county rich in superstitions, it is not surprising to find that a fisherman will turn back from going to his boat, if he happens on his way to meet a parson, a woman, or a hare, as any one of these brings bad luck. It is also extremely unwise to mention to a man who is baiting lines a hare, a rabbit, a fox, a pig, or an egg. ”

“ It would need the powers of an epic poet to invoke the muse to sing the rival claims of Leeds and Sheffield as headquarters of the West Riding, and the historian who is not a Yorkshireman must be content to set the fact on record that York was finally selected for reasons which seemed sufficient to the high contracting parties. ”

“ But the Yorkshire country is doubly interesting, for if the landscape is of surpassing beauty, the cities, the villages, the castles and abbeys, and the fields where some of the fiercest battles in Britain have been fought, have intertwined their associations with every hill and valley. Not only the size of the shire, but its position—midway between London and the Scottish border, and extending almost from coast to coast—made it a bulwark, as it were, against the incursions of the Scots and their numerous sympathizers in the extreme north of England. ”

“ The men one dreams of are wearing suits of chain mail, or are in the dress so quaintly drawn in the tapestry at Bayeux, and they have brought with them their wives, their servants, and even their dogs. Thus Richmond began as a foreign town, and the folks ate and drank and slept as they had always done before they left France. Much of this alien blood was no doubt absorbed by the already mixed Anglo-Saxon and Danish population of Yorkshire, and perhaps, if his descent could be traced, one would find that the passer-by who has just disturbed our dreaming has Breton blood in his veins. ”

“ The distance between the towns is short, and soon after passing Starbeck we come to Harrogate’s extensive common known as the Stray. We follow the grassy space, when it takes a sharp turn to the north, and are soon in the centre of the great watering-place. Among the buildings that rise up in imposing masses on each side of us we can see no traces of anything that is not of recent date, and we find nothing at all to suggest that the place really belongs to Yorkshire. ”