A Month in Yorkshire

“My brave West Riding brooks, your king you need not scorn,Proud Naiades neither ye, North Riders that are born,My yellow-sanded Your, and thou my sister SwaleThat dancing come to Ouse, thro’ many a dainty dale,Do greatly me enrich, clear Derwent driving downFrom Cleveland; and thou Hull, that highly dost renown,Th’ East Riding by thy rise, do homage to your king,And let the sea-nymphs thus of mighty Humber sing;That full an hundred floods my wat’ry court maintainWhich either of themselves, or in their greater’s trainTheir tribute pay to me; and for my princely name,From Humber king of Hunns, as anciently it came,So still I stick to him: for from that Eastern kingOnce in me drown’d, as I my pedigree do bring:So his great name receives no prejudice thereby;For as he was a king, so know ye all that IAm king of all the floods, that North of Trent do flow;Then let the idle world no more such cost bestow,Nor of the muddy Nile so great a wonder make,Though with her bellowing fall, she violently takeThe neighbouring people deaf; nor Ganges so much praise,That where he narrowest is, eight miles in broadness laysHis bosom; nor so much hereafter shall be spokeOf that (but lately found) Guianian Oronoque,Whose cataract a noise so horrible doth keepThat it even Neptune frights: what flood comes to the deep,Than Humber that is heard more horribly to roar?For when my Higre comes, I make my either shoreEven tremble with the sound, that I afar do send.”

The view of Hull seen from the water is much more smoky than picturesque. Coming nearer we see the Cornwallis anchored off the citadel, looking as trim and earnest as one fancies an English seventy-four ought to look, and quite in keeping with the embrasured walls through which guns are peeping on shore. The quay and landing-places exhibit multifarious signs of life, especially if your arrival occur when the great railway steam-ferry-boat is about to start. There is, however, something about Hull which inspires a feeling of melancholy. This was my third visit, and still the first impression prevailed. It may be the dead level, or the sleepy architecture, or the sombre colour, or a combination of the three, that touches the dismal key. “Memorable for mud and train oil” was what Etty always said of the town in which he served an apprenticeship of seven weary years; yet in his time there remained certain picturesque features which have since disappeared with the large fleet of Greenland whale-ships whereof the town was once so proud:—now migrated to Peterhead. However, we must not forget that Hull is the third port in the kingdom; that nearly a hundred steamers arrive and depart at regular intervals from over sea, or coastwise, or from up the rivers; that of the 4000 tons of German yeast now annually imported, worth nearly £200,000, it receives more than two-thirds; that it was one of the first places to demonstrate the propulsion of vessels by the power of steam. Nor will we forget that we are in one of the towns formerly held in wholesome dread by evil-doers when recommendation to mercy was seldom heard of, as is testified by the thieves’ litany of the olden time, thus irreverently phrased:

“From Hull, Hell, and Halifax,Good Lord deliver us.”

Halifax, however, stood pre-eminent for sharp practice; a thief in that parish had no chance of stealing twice, for if he stole to the value of thirteenpence halfpenny, he was forthwith beheaded.

Andrew Marvell need not have been so severe upon the Dutch, considering how much there was in his native county similar in character and aspect to that which he satirised. You soon discover that this character still prevails. Is not the southern landing place of the steam-ferry named New Holland? and here in Hull, whichever way you look, you see masts, and are stopped by water or a bridge half open, or just going to open, whichever way you walk. It is somewhat puzzling at first; but a few minutes’ survey from the top of the High Church affords an explanation.

Following the line once occupied by the old fortifications—the walls by which Parliament baffled the king—the docks form a continuous water-communication from the river Hull on one side to the Humber on the other, so that a considerable portion of the town has become an island, and the sight of masts and pennons in all directions, some slowly moving, is accounted for. At the opening of the Junction Dock in 1829, whereby the desired connection was established, the celebration included circumnavigation of the insular portion by a gaily decorated steamer.

The amphibious Dutch-looking physiognomy thus produced is further assisted by the presence of numerous windmills in the outskirts, and the levelness of the surrounding country. A hundred years ago, and the view across what is now cultivated fields would have comprehended as much water as land, if not more. Should a certain popular authoress ever publish her autobiography, she will, perhaps, tell us how Mr. Stickney, her father, used when a boy to skate three or four miles to school over unreclaimed flats within sight of this church tower of Hull, now rich in grass and grain. Only by a system of drainage and embankment on a great scale, and a careful maintenance, has the reclamation of this and other parts of Holderness been accomplished. Taylor, the water-poet, who was here in 1632, records,

“It yearly costs five hundred pounds besidesTo fence the towne from Hull and Humber’s tydes,For stakes, for bavins, timber, stones, and piles,All which are brought by water many miles;For workmen’s labour, and a world of things,Which on the towne excessive charges brings.”

British liberty owes something to this superabundance of water. Hull was the first town in the kingdom to shut its gates against the king and declare for the people, and was in consequence besieged by Charles. In this strait, Sir John Hotham, the governor, caused the dikes to be cut and sluices drawn, and laid the whole neighbourhood under water, and kept the besiegers completely at bay. The Royalists, to retaliate, dug trenches to divert the stream of fresh water that supplied the town,—a means of annoyance to which Hull, from its situation, was always liable. In the good old times, when the neighbouring villagers had any cause of quarrel with the townsfolk, they used to throw carrion and other abominations into the channel, or let in the salt-water, nor would they desist until warned by a certain Pope in an admonitory letter.

The church itself, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, is a handsome specimen of florid Gothic, dating from the reign of Edward II. You will perhaps wish that the effect of the light tall columns, rising to the blue panelled roof, were not weakened by the somewhat cold and bare aspect of the interior. If you are curious about bells, there are inscriptions to be deciphered on some of those that hang in the tower; and in the belfry you may see mysterious tables hanging on the wall of ‘grandsire bobs,’ and ‘grandsire tripples;’ things in which the ringers take pride, but as unintelligible to the uninitiated as Babylonish writing. There, too, hangs the ringers’ code of laws, and a queer code it is! One of the articles runs:—“Every Person who shall Ring any Bell with his Hat or Spurs on, shall Forfeit and Pay Sixpence, for the Use of the Ringers.” And the same fine is levied from “any Person who shall have Read Any of these Orders with his Hat upon his Head;” from which, and the characteristic touches in the other “orders,” you will very likely come to some strange conclusions respecting the fraternity of ringers.

The market-place is in the main street, where a gilt equestrian statue of William III. looks down on stalls of fruit, fish, and seaweed, and the moving crowd of townsfolk and sailors. By the side of the Humber dock rises the Wilberforce monument, a tall column, bearing on its capital a statue of the renowned advocate of the negroes. And when you have looked at these and at the hospital, and walked through the garrison, you will have visited nearly all that is monumental in Hull.

At low water, the little river Hull is a perfect representation of a very muddy ditch. While crossing the ferry to the citadel, the old boatman told me he could remember when every high tide flowed up into the streets of the town, but the new works for the docks now keep the water out. Hundreds of piles were driven into the sandy bank to establish a firm foundation for the massive walls, quays, and abutments. At the time when timber rose to an enormous price in consequence of Napoleon’s continental blockade, the piles of the coffer-dam which had been buried seven years, were pulled up and sold for more than their original cost. Government gave the site of some old military works and 10,000l. towards the formation of the first dock, on condition that it should be made deep enough to receive ships of fifty guns.

In records of the reign of Henry VIII. there appears—“Item: the Kinges Ma’tes house to be made to serve as a Sitidell and a speciall kepe of the hole town.” The present citadel has an antiquated look, and quiet withal, for the whole garrison, at the time I walked through it, numbered only twenty-five artillerymen. Judging from my own experience, one part of the sergeant’s duty is to shout at inquisitive strangers who get up on the battery to look through an embrasure, and the more vehemently as they feign not to hear till their curiosity is satisfied. There is room in the magazines for twenty thousand stand of arms, and ordnance stores for a dozen ships of the line. A ditch fed from the Hull completely separates the fortifications from the neighbouring ship-yards.

Half a day’s exploration led me to the conclusion that the most cheerful quarter of Hull is the cemetery. I was sitting there on a grassy bank enjoying the breeze, when a countryman came up who perhaps felt lonely, for he sat down by my side, and in less than a minute became autobiographical. He was a village carpenter, “came forty mile out of Lincolnshire” for the benefit of his health; had been waiting three days for his brother’s ship, in which he meant to take a voyage to China, and feeling dull walked every day to the cemetery; for, he said, “It’s the pleasantest place I can find about the town.” I suggested reading as a relief; but he “couldn’t make much out o’readin’—’ud rather work the jack-plane all day than read.” The long voyage to China appeared to offer so good an opportunity for improving himself in this particular that I urged him to take a few books on board, and gave an assurance that one hour’s study every day would enable him to read with pleasure by the time he returned.

“Oh, but we be on’y three days a-going,” he answered.

I had played the part of an adviser to no purpose, for it appeared, on further questioning, that his brother’s ship was a small sloop trading to some port beyond the North Sea about three days distant; he did not know where it was, but was sure his brother called it China. I mentioned the names of all the ports I could think of to discover the real one if possible, but in vain; nor have I yet found one that has the sound of China.

One thing I saw on my way back to the town, which London—so apt to be self-conceited—might adopt with signal advantage. It was a huge iron roller drawn by horses up and down a newly macadamised road. Under the treatment of the ponderous cylinder, the broken stone, combined with a sprinkling of asphalte, is reduced to a firm and level surface, over which vehicles travel without any of that distressing labour and loss of time and temper so often witnessed in the metropolis, where a thousand pair of wheels produce less solidity in a week than the roller would in a day; especially on the spongy roads presided over by St. Pancras.

Late in the evening, while walking about the streets, even in the principal thoroughfares, I saw evidences enough of—to use a mild adjective—an unpolished population. The northern characteristics were strongly marked.

CHAPTER III

A Railway Trip—More Land Reclamation—Hedon—Historical Recollections—Burstwick—The Earls of Albemarle—Keyingham—The Duke of York—Winestead—Andrew Marvell’s Birthplace—A Glimpse of the Patriot—Patrington—A Church to be proud of—The Hildyard Arms—Feminine Paper-hangers—Walk to Spurn—Talk with a Painter—Welwick—Yellow Ochre and Cleanliness—Skeffling—Humber Bank—Miles of Mud—Kilnsea—Burstall Garth—The Greedy Sea—The Sandbank—A Lost Town, Ravenser Odd—A Reminiscence from Shakspeare—The Spurn Lighthouse—Withernsea—Owthorne—Sister Churches—The Ghastly Churchyard—A Retort for a Fool—A Word for Philologists.

By the first train on the morrow I started for Patrington. The windmills on the outskirts of the town were soon left behind, and away we went between the thick hedgerows and across the teeming fields, which, intersected by broad deep drains, and grazed by sleek cattle, exhibit at once to your eye the peculiarities of Holderness. All along between the railway and the river there are thousands of acres, formerly called the ‘out-marshes,’ which have been reclaimed, and now yield wonderful crops of oats. After the principal bank has been constructed, the tide is let in under proper control to a depth of from three to five feet, and is left undisturbed until all the mud held in suspension is deposited. The impoverished flood is then discharged through the sluices, and in due time, after the first has stiffened, a fresh flow is admitted. By this process of ‘warping,’ as it is called, three or four feet of mud will be thrown down in three years, covering the original coarse, sour surface with one abounding in the elements of fertility. Far inland, even up the Trent, and around the head of the Humber within reach of the tide, the farmers have recourse to warping, and not unfrequently prefer a fresh layer of mud to all other fertilisers.

About every two miles we stop at a station, and at each there is something to be noted and remembered. Hedon, a dull decayed town, now two miles from the river, once the commercial rival of Hull, has something still to be proud of in its noble church, “the pride of Holderness.” Here, too, within a fence, stands the ancient cross, which, after several removals, as the sea devoured its original site—a royal adventurer’s landing-place—found here a permanent station. At Burstwick, two miles farther, lay the estates, the caput baroniæ, of the renowned Earls of Albemarle. A few minutes more and another stop reminds us of Keyingham bridge, where a party of the men of Holderness opposed the passage of Edward IV. with his three hundred Flemings, some carrying strange fire-weapons, until he replied to their resolute question that he had only come to claim his dukedom of York. A “dukedom large enough” for a wise man. And, as tradition tells, Keyingham church was the scene of a miracle in 1392, when all the doors were split by a lightning-stroke, and the tomb of Master Philip Ingleberd, formerly rector, sweated a sweetly-scented oil, perhaps out of gratitude to the patron saint for the escape of thirteen men who fell all at once with the ladder while seeking to put out the fire in the steeple, and came to no harm. Then Winestead, which was, if the parish-register may be believed, the birthplace of Andrew Marvell—not Hull, as is commonly reported of the incorruptible Yorkshire man. His father was rector here, but removed to Hull during the poet’s infancy, which may account for the error. The font in which he was christened having fallen into neglect, was used as a horse-trough, until some good antiquary removed it into the grounds of Mr. Owst, at Keyingham, where it remains safe among other relics. Andrew represented Hull in parliament for twenty years, and was the last member who, according to old usage, received payment for his services. One’s thought kindles in thinking of him here at this quiet village, as a friend of Milton, like him using his gifts manfully and successfully in defence of the Englishman’s birthright. What a happy little glimpse we get of him in the lines—

“Climb at court for me that will—Tottering favour’s pinnacle;All I seek is to lie still,Settled in some secret nest,In calm leisure let me rest,And far off the public stage,Pass away my silent age.Thus, when without noise, unknown,I have lived out all my span,I shall die without a groan,An old honest countryman.”

Then Patrington—erst Patrick’s town—one of those simple-looking places which contrast agreeably with towns sophisticated by the clamour and bustle of trade; and although a few gas-lamps tell of innovation, a market not more than once a fortnight upholds the authority of ancient usage. You see nearly the whole of the town at once; a long, wide, quiet street, terminated by a graceful spire, so graceful, indeed, that it will allure you at once to the church from which it springs; and what a feast for the eye awaits you! Truly the “pride of Holderness” is not monopolised by Hedon. The style is that which prevailed in the reign of Edward II., and is harmonious throughout, from weathercock to door-sill. You will walk round it again and again, admiring the beauty of its design and proportion, pausing oft to contemplate the curious carvings, and the octagonal spire springing lightly from flying buttresses to a height of one hundred and ninety feet. The gargoyles exhibit strange conceits; chiselled to represent a fiddler—a bagpiper—a man holding a pig—a fiend griping a terrified sinner—a lion thrusting his tongue out—and others equally incongruous. How I wished the architect would come to life for an hour to tell me what he meant by them, and by certain full-length figures carved on the buttresses, which accord so little with our modern sense of decency, much less with the character of a religious house! Inside you find a corresponding lightness and gracefulness, and similarly relieved by a sprinkling of monsters. The east or ‘Ladye aisle’ contains three chantry chapels; the ‘Easter sepulchre’ is a rare specimen of the sculptor’s art, and the font hewn from a single block of granite displays touches of a master hand. St. Patrick’s church at Patrington is an edifice to linger in; an example of beauty in architecture in itself worth a journey to Yorkshire.

There are relics, too, of an earlier age: embankments discovered some feet below the present surface, fragments of buildings, an altar, and other objects of especial interest to the antiquary, for they mark Patrington as the site of a Roman station. An important station, if the supposition be correct that this was the Prætorium of Antoninus—the place where some of the legions disembarked to subjugate the Brigantes.

To eat breakfast under the sign of the Hildyard Arms—a name, by the way, which preserves in a modified form the old Saxon Hildegarde—seemed like connecting one’s-self with remote antiquity. The ancestors of the Hildyards were here before the Conquest. One of the family, Sir Christopher, is commemorated by a handsome monument in Winestead church. The landlord, willing to entertain in more ways than one, talked of the improvements that had taken place within his remembrance. The railway was not one of them, for it took away trade from the town, and deadened the market. Visitors were but few, and most of those who came wondered at seeing so beautiful a church in such an out-of-the-way place. He could show me a garden near the churchyard which was said to be the spot where the building-stone was landed from boats; but the water had sunk away hundreds of years ago. Patrington haven—a creek running up from the Humber—had retreated from the town, and since the reclamation of Sunk Island, required frequent dredging to clear it of mud. The farmers in the neighbourhood were very well content with the harvests now yielded by the land. In 1854 some of them reaped “most wonderful crops.”

I had seen a woman painting her door-posts, and asked him whether that was recognised as women’s work in Patrington. “Sure,” he answered, “all over the country too. Women do the whitewashing, and painting, ay, and the paper-hanging. Look at this room, now! My daughter put that up.”

I did look, and saw that the pattern on the walls sloped two or three inches from the perpendicular, whereby opposite sides of the room appeared to be leaning in contrary directions. However, I said nothing to disparage the damsel’s merits.

From Patrington to Spurn the distance is thirteen miles. Hoping to walk thither and back in the day, I snapped the thread of the landlord’s talk, and set out for the lighthouse. Presently I overtook a man, and we had not walked half a mile together before I knew that he was a master-painter in a small way at Patrington, now going to paper a room at Skeffling, a village five miles off. To hear that he would get only sixpence a piece for the hanging surprised me, for I thought that nowhere out of London would any one be silly enough to hang paper for a halfpenny a yard.

“You see,” he rejoined, “there’s three in the trade at Patrington, and then ’tis only the bettermost rooms that we gets to do. The women does all the rest, and the painting besides. That’s where it is. But ’taint such a very bad job as I be going to. They finds their own paste, and there’s nine pieces to hang: that’ll give me four and sixpence; and then I shall get my dinner, and my tea too, if I don’t finish too soon. So it’ll be a pretty fair day’s work.” And yet the chances were that he would have to wait six months for payment.

We passed through Welwick—place of wells—a small, clean village, with a small, squat church, with carvings sadly mutilated on the outside, and inside, a handsome tomb. At Plowland, near this, lived the Wrights, confederates in the Gunpowder Plot. Nearly all the cottages are models of cleanliness; the door-sill and step washed with yellow ochre, and here and there you see through the open door that the walls of the room inside are papered, and the little pictures and simple ornaments all in keeping. You will take pleasure in these indications, and perhaps believe them to be the result of an affection for cleanliness. The walls of some of the houses and farm-yards are built of pebbles—‘sea-cobbles,’ as they are called—placed zigzag-wise, with a novel and pretty effect: and the examples multiply as we get nearer the sea, where they may be seen in the walls of the churches.

At Skeffling the painter turned into a farm-house which looked comfortably hospitable enough to put him at ease regarding his dinner, and as if it had little need to take six months’ credit for four and sixpence, while I turned from the high-road into a track leading past the church—which, by the way, has architectural features worthy examination—to the coarse and swarthy flats where the distant view is hidden by a great embankment that runs along their margin for miles. Once on the top of this ‘Humber-bank,’ I met a lusty breeze sweeping in from the sea, and had before me a singular prospect—the bank itself stretching far as the eye can see in a straight line to the east and west, covered with coarse grass and patches of gray, thistle-like, sea-holly—Eryngo maritima. Its outer sloop is loose sand falling away to the damp line left by the tide, beyond which all is mud—a great brown expanse outspread for miles. The tide being at its lowest, only the tops of the masts of small vessels are to be seen, moving, as it seems, mysteriously: the river itself is hardly discernible. In places the mud lies smooth and slimy; in others thickly rippled, or tossed into billows, as if the water had stamped thereon an impression of all its moods. Fishermen wade across it in huge boots from their boats to the firm beach, and dig down through it two or three feet to find stiff holding-ground for their anchors.

Yonder rises the lighthouse, surprisingly far, as it seems, to seaward, at times half hidden by a thin, creeping haze. And from Spurn to Sunk Island this whole northern shore is of the same brown, monotonous aspect: a desert, where the only living things are a few sea-birds, wheeling and darting rapidly, their white wings flashing by contrast with the sad-coloured shore.

I walked along the top of the bank to Kilnsea, deceived continually in my estimate of distance by the long dead level. Here and there a drain pierces the bank, and reappears on the outer side as a raised sewer, with its outlet beyond high-water mark; and these constructions, as well as the waifs and strays—old baskets and dead seagulls—cheat the eye strangely as to their magnitude when first seen. At times, after a lashing storm has swept off a few acres of the mud, the soil beneath is found to be a mixture of peat and gravel, in which animal and vegetable remains and curious antiquities are imbedded. Now and then the relics are washed out, and show by their character that they once belonged to Burstall Priory, a religious house, despoiled by the sea before King Harry began his Reformation. Burstall Garth, one of the pastures traversed by the bank, preserves its name: the building itself has utterly disappeared.