Filey Brig
The Brig has plainly been formed by the erosion of Carr Naze, the headland of dark, reddish-brown boulder clay, leaving its hard bed of sandstone (of the Middle Calcareous Grit formation) exposed to the particular and ceaseless attention of the waves. It is one of the joys of Filey to go along the northward curve of the bay at low tide, and then walk along the uneven tabular masses of rock with hungry waves heaving and foaming within a few yards on either hand. No wonder that there has been sufficient sense among those who spend their lives in promoting schemes for ugly piers and senseless promenades, to realize that Nature has supplied Filey with a more permanent and infinitely more attractive pier than their fatuous ingenuity could produce. There is a spice of danger associated with the Brig, adding much to its interest; for no one should venture along the spit of rocks unless the tide is in a proper state to allow him a safe return. A melancholy warning of the dangers of the Brig is fixed to the rocky wall of the headland, describing how an unfortunate visitor was swept into the sea by the sudden arrival of an abnormally large wave, but this need not frighten away from the fascinating ridge of rock those who use ordinary care in watching the sea. At high tide the waves come over the seaweedy rocks at the foot of the headland, making it necessary to climb to the grassy top in order to get back to Filey.
The real fascination of the Brig comes when it can only be viewed from the top of the Naze above, when a gale is blowing from the north or north-east, and driving enormous waves upon the line of projecting rocks. You watch far out until the dark green line of a higher wave than any of the others that are creating a continuous thunder down below comes steadily onward, and reaching the foam-streaked area, becomes still more sinister. As it approaches within striking distance, a spent wave, sweeping backwards, seems as though it may weaken the onrush of the towering wall of water; but its power is swallowed up and dissipated in the general advance, and with only a smooth hollow of creamy-white water in front, the giant raises itself to its fullest height, its thin crest being at once caught by the wind, and blown off in long white beards.
The moment has come; the mass of water feels the resistance of the rocks, and, curling over into a long green cylinder, brings its head down with terrific force on the immovable side of the Brig. Columns of water shoot up perpendicularly into the air as though a dozen 12-inch shells had exploded in the water simultaneously. With a roar the imprisoned air escapes, and for a moment the whole Brig is invisible in a vast cloud of spray; then dark ledges of rock can be seen running with creamy water, and the scene of the impact is a cauldron of seething foam, backed by a smooth surface of pale green marble, veined with white. Then the waters gather themselves together again, and the pounding of lesser waves keeps up a thrilling spectacle until the moment for another greatcouparrives.
Years ago Filey obtained a reputation for being 'quiet,' and the sense conveyed by those who disliked the place was that of dullness and primness. This fortunate chance has protected the little town from the vulgarizing influences of the unlettered hordes let loose upon the coast in summer-time, and we find a sea-front without the flimsy meretricious buildings of the popular resorts. Instead of imitating Blackpool and Margate, this sensible place has retained a quiet and semi-rural front to the sea, and, as already stated, has not marred its appearance with a jetty.
From the smooth sweep of golden sand rises a steep slope grown over with trees and bushes which shade the paths in many places. Without claiming any architectural charm, the town is small and quietly unobtrusive, and has not the untidy, half-built character of so many watering-places.
Above a steep and narrow hollow, running straight down to the sea, and densely wooded on both sides, stands the church. It has a very sturdy tower rising from its centre, and, with its simple battlemented outline and slit windows, has a semi-fortified appearance. The high pitched-roofs of Early English times have been flattened without cutting away the projecting drip-stones on the tower, which remain a conspicuous feature. The interior is quite impressive. Round columns alternated with octagonal ones support pointed arches, and a clerestory above pierced with roundheaded slits, indicating very decisively that the nave was built in the Transitional Norman period. It appears that a western tower was projected, but never carried out, and an unusual feature is the descent by two steps into the chancel.
A beautiful view from the churchyard includes the whole sweep of the bay, cut off sharply by the Brig on the left hand, and ending about eight miles away in the lofty range of white cliffs extending from Speeton to Flamborough Head.
The Outermost Point of Flamborough Head
The headland itself is lower by more than a 100 feet than the cliffs in the neighbourhood of Bempton and Speeton, which for a distance of over two miles exceed 300 feet. A road from Bempton village stops short a few fields from the margin of the cliffs, and a path keeps close to the precipitous wall of gleaming white chalk.
We come over the dry, sweet-smelling grass to the cliff edge on a fresh morning, with a deep blue sky overhead and a sea below of ultramarine broken up with an infinitude of surfaces reflecting scraps of the cliffs and the few white clouds. Falling on our knees, we look straight downwards into a cove full of blue shade; but so bright is the surrounding light that every detail is microscopically clear. The crumpling and distortion of the successive layers of chalk can be seen with such ease that we might be looking at a geological textbook. On the ledges, too, can be seen rows of little whitebreasted puffins; razor-bills are perched here and there, as well as countless guillemots. The ringed or bridled guillemot also breeds on the cliffs, and a number of other types of northern sea-birds are periodically noticed along these inaccessible Bempton Cliffs. The guillemot makes no nest, merely laying a single egg on a ledge. If it is taken away by those who plunder the cliffs at the risk of their lives, the bird lays another egg, and if that disappears, perhaps even a third.
Coming to Flamborough Head along the road from the station, the first noticeable feature is at the point where the road makes a sharp turn into a deep wooded hollow. It is here that we cross the line of the remarkable entrenchment known as the Danes' Dyke. At this point it appears to follow the bed of a stream, but northwards, right across the promontory—that is, for two-thirds of its length—the huge trench is purely artificial. No doubt thevallumon the seaward side has been worn down very considerably, and thefossewould have been deeper, making in its youth, a barrier which must have given the dwellers on the headland a very complete security.
Like most popular names, the association of the Danes with the digging of this enormous trench has been proved to be inaccurate, and it would have been less misleading and far more popular if the work had been attributed to the devil. In the autumn of 1879 General Pitt Rivers dug several trenches in the rampart just north of the point where the road from Bempton passes through the Dyke. The position was chosen in order that the excavations might be close to the small stream which runs inside the Dyke at this point, the likelihood of utensils or weapons being dropped close to the water-supply of the defenders being considered important. The results of the excavations proved conclusively that the people who dug the ditch and threw up the rampart were users of flint. The most remarkable discovery was that the ground on the inner slope of the rampart, at a short distance below the surface, contained innumerable artificial flint flakes, all lying in a horizontal position, but none were found on the outer slope. From this fact General Pitt Rivers concluded that within the stockade running along the top of thevallumthe defenders were in the habit of chipping their weapons, the flakes falling on the inside. The great entrenchment of Flamborough is consequently the work of flint-using people, and 'is not later than the Bronze Period.'
And the strangest fact concerning the promontory is the isolation of its inhabitants from the rest of the county, a traditional hatred for strangers having kept the fisherfolk of the peninsula aloof from outside influences. They have married among themselves for so long, that it is quite possible that their ancestral characteristics have been reproduced, with only a very slight intermixture of other stocks, for an exceptionally long period. On taking minute particulars of ninety Flamborough men and women, General Pitt Rivers discovered that they were above the average stature of the neighbourhood, and were, with only one or two exceptions, dark-haired. They showed little or no trace of the fair-haired element usually found in the people of this part of Yorkshire. It is also stated that almost within living memory, when the headland was still further isolated by a belt of uncultivated wolds, the village could not be approached by a stranger without some danger.
We find no one to object to our intrusion, and go on towards the village. It is a straggling collection of low, red houses, lacking, unfortunately, anything which can honestly be termed picturesque; for the church stands alone, a little to the south, and the small ruin of what is called 'The Danish Tower' is too insignificant to add to the attractiveness of the place.
All the males of Flamborough are fishermen, or dependent on fishing for their livelihood; and in spite of the summer visitors, there is a total indifference to their incursions in the way of catering for their entertainment, the aim of the trippers being the lighthouse and the cliffs nearly two miles away.
Formerly, the church had only a belfry of timber, the existing stone tower being only ten years old. Under the Norman chancel arch there is a delicately-carved Perpendicular screen, having thirteen canopied niches richly carved above and below, and still showing in places the red, blue, and gold of its old paint-work. Another screen south of the chancel is patched and roughly finished. The altar-tomb of Sir Marmaduke Constable, of Flamborough, on the north side of the chancel, is remarkable for its long inscription, detailing the chief events in the life of this great man, who was considered one of the most eminent and potent persons in the county in the reign of Henry VIII. The greatness of the man is borne out first in a recital of his doughty deeds: of his passing over to France 'with Kyng Edwarde the fourith, y[t] noble knyght.'
The inscription goes on in this way to tell how he fought at Flodden Field when he was seventy, 'nothyng hedyng his age.'
Sir Marmaduke's daughter Catherine was married to Sir Roger Cholmley, called 'the Great Black Knight of the North,' who was the first of his family to settle in Yorkshire, and also fought at Flodden, receiving his knighthood after that signal victory over the Scots.
Yorkshire being a county in which superstitions are uncommonly long-lived it is not surprising to find that a fisherman will turn back from going to his boat, if he happen 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. This sounds foolish, but a fisherman will abandon his work till the next day if these animals are mentioned in his presence.
On the north and south sides of the headland there are precarious beaches for the fisherman to bring in their boats. They have no protection at all from the weather, no attempt at forming even such miniature harbours as may be seen on the Berwickshire coast having been made. When the wind blows hard from the north, the landing on that side is useless, and the boats, having no shelter, are hauled up the steep slope with the help of a steam windlass. Under these circumstances the South Landing is used. It is similar in most respects to the northern one, but, owing to the cliffs being lower, the cove is less picturesque. At low tide a beach of very rough shingle is exposed between the ragged chalk cliffs, curiously eaten away by the sea. Seaweed paints much of the shore and the base of the cliffs a blackish green, and above the perpendicular whiteness the ruddy brown clay slopes back to the grass above.
When the boats have just come in and added their gaudy vermilions, blues, and emerald greens to the picture, the North Landing is worth seeing. The men in their blue jerseys and sea-boots coming almost to their hips, land their hauls of silvery cod and load the baskets pannier-wise on the backs of sturdy donkeys, whose work is to trudge up the steep slope to the road, nearly 200 feet above the boats, where carts take the fish to the station four miles away.
In following the margin of the cliffs to the outermost point of the peninsula, we get a series of splendid stretches of cliff scenery. The chalk is deeply indented in many places, and is honey-combed with caves. Great white pillars and stacks of chalk stand in picturesque groups in some of the small bays, and everywhere there is the interest of watching the heaving water far below, with white gulls floating unconcernedly on the surface, or flapping their great stretch of wing as they circle just above the waves.
Near the modern lighthouse stands a tall, hexagonal tower, built of chalk in four stories, with a string course between each. The signs of age it bears and the remarkable obscurity surrounding its origin and purpose would suggest great antiquity, and yet there seems little doubt that the tower is at the very earliest Elizabethan. The chalk, being extremely soft, has weathered away to such an extent that the harder stone of the windows and doors now projects several inches.
In a record dated June 21, 1588, the month before the Spanish Armada was sighted in the English Channel, a list is given of the beacons in the East Riding, and instructions as to when they should be lighted, and what action should be taken when the warning was seen. It says briefly:
There is no reference to any tower, and the beacons everywhere seem merely to have been bonfires ready for lighting, watched every day by two, and every night by three 'honest householders ... above the age of thirty years.' The old tower would appear, therefore, to have been put up as a lighthouse. If this is a correct supposition, however, the dangers of the headland to shipping must have been recognized as exceedingly great several centuries ago. A light could not have failed to have been a boon to mariners, and its maintenance would have been a matter of importance to all who owned ships; and yet, if this old tower ever held a lantern, the hiatus between the last night when it glowed on the headland, and the erection of the present lighthouse is so great that no one seems to be able to state definitely for what purpose the early structure came into existence.
Year after year when night fell the cliffs were shrouded in blackness, with the direful result that between 1770 and 1806 one hundred and seventy-four ships were wrecked or lost on or near the promontory. It remained for a benevolent-minded customs officer of Bridlington—a Mr. Milne—to suggest the building of a lighthouse to the Elder Brethren of Trinity House, with the result that since December 6, 1806, a powerful light has every night flashed on Flamborough Head. The immediate result was that in the first seven years of its beneficent work no vessel was 'lost on that station when the lights could be seen.'
The derivation of the name Flamborough has been conclusively shown to have nothing at all to do with the English word 'flame,' being possibly a corruption ofFleinn, a Norse surname, andborgorburgh, meaning a castle. In Domesday it is spelt 'Flaneburg,' andflaneis the Norse for an arrow or sword.
At the point where the chalk cliffs disappear and the low coast of Holderness begins, we come to the exceedingly popular watering-place of Bridlington. At one time the town was quite separate from the quay, and even now there are two towns—the solemn and serious, almost Quakerish, place inland, and the eminently pleasure-loving and frivolous holiday resort on the sea; but they are now joined up by modern houses and the railway-station, and in time they will be as united as the 'Three Towns' of Plymouth. Along the sea-front are spread out by the wide parades, all those 'attractions' which exercise their potential energies on certain types of mankind as each summer comes round. There are seats, concert-rooms, hotels, lodging-houses, bands, kiosks, refreshment-bars, boats, bathing-machines, a switchback-railway, and even a spa, by which means the migratory folk are housed, fed, amused, and given every excuse for loitering within a few yards of the long curving line of waves that advances and retreats over the much-trodden sand.
The two stone piers enclosing the harbour make an interesting feature in the centre of the sea-front, where the few houses of old Bridlington Quay that have survived, are not entirely unpicturesque.
In 1642 Queen Henrietta Maria landed on whatever quay then existed. She had just returned from Holland with ships laden with arms and ammunition for the Royalist army. Adverse winds had brought the Dutch ships to Bridlington instead of Newcastle, where the Queen had intended to land, and a delay was caused while messengers were sent to the Earl of Newcastle in order that her landing might be effected in proper security. News of the Dutch ships lying off Bridlington was, however, conveyed to four Parliamentary vessels stationed by the bar at Tynemouth, and no time was lost in sailing southwards. What happened is told in a letter published in the same year, and dated February 25, 1642. It describes how, after two days' riding at anchor, the cavalry arrived, upon which the Queen disembarked, and the next morning the rest of the loyal army came to wait on her.
'God that was carefull to preserve Her by Sea, did likewise continue his favour to Her on the Land: For that night foure of the Parliament Ships arrived at Burlington, without being perceived by us; and at foure a clocke in the morning gave us an Alarme, which caused us to send speedily to the Port to secure our Boats of Ammunition, which were but newly landed. But about an houre after the foure Ships began to ply us so fast with their Ordinance, that it made us all to rise out of our beds with diligence, and leave the Village, at least the women; for the Souldiers staid very resolutely to defend the Ammunition, in case their forces should land. One of the Ships did Her the favour to flanck upon the house where the Queene lay, which was just before the Peere; and before She was out of Her bed, the Cannon bullets whistled so loud about her, (which Musicke you may easily believe was not very pleasing to Her) that all the company pressed Her earnestly to goe out of the house, their Cannon having totally beaten downe all the neighbouring houses, and two Cannon bullets falling from the top to the bottome of the house where She was; so that (clothed as She could) She went on foot some little distance out of the Towne, under the shelter of a Ditch (like that of Newmarket;) whither before She could get, the Cannon bullets fell thicke about us, and a Sergeant was killed within twenty paces of Her.'
In old Bridlington there stands the fine church of the Augustinian Priory we have already seen from a distance, and an ancient structure known as the Bayle Gate, a remnant of the defences of the monastery. They stand at no great distance apart, but do not arrange themselves to form a picture, which is unfortunate, and so also is the lack of any real charm in the domestic architecture of the adjoining streets. The Bayle Gate has a large pointed arch and a postern, and the date of its erection appears to be the end of the fourteenth century, when permission was given to the prior to fortify the monastery. Unhappily for Bridlington, an order to destroy the buildings was given soon after the Dissolution, and the nave of the church seems to have been spared only because it was used as the parish church. Quite probably, too, the gatehouse was saved from destruction on account of the room it contains having been utilized for holding courts. The upper portions of the church towers are modern restorations, and their different heights and styles give the building a remarkable, but not a beautiful outline. At the west end, between the towers is a large Perpendicular window, occupying the whole width of the nave, and on the north side the vaulted porch is a very beautiful feature.
The interior reveals an inspiring perspective of clustered columns built in the Early English Period with a fine Decorated triforium on the north side. Both transepts and the chancel appear to have been destroyed with the conventual buildings, and the present chancel is merely a portion of the nave separated with screens.
Southwards in one huge curve of nearly forty miles stretches the low coast of Holderness, seemingly continued into infinitude. There is nothing comparable to it on the coasts of the British Isles for its featureless monotony and for the unbroken front it presents to the sea. The low brown cliffs of hard clay seem to have no more resisting power to the capacious appetite of the waves than if they were of gingerbread. The progress of the sea has been continued for centuries, and stories of lost villages and of overwhelmed churches are met with all the way to Spurn Head. Four or five miles south of Bridlington we come to a point on the shore where, looking out among the lines of breaking waves, we are including the sides of the two demolished villages of Auburn and Hartburn.
From a casual glance at Skipsea no one would attribute any importance to it in the past. It was, nevertheless, the chief place in the lordship of Holderness in Norman times, and from that we may also infer that it was the most well-defended stronghold. On a level plain having practically no defensible sites, great earthworks would be necessary, and these we find at Skipsea Brough. There is a high mound surrounded by a ditch, and a segment of the great outer circle of defences exists on the south-west side. No masonry of any description can be seen on the grass-covered embankment, but on the artificial hillock, once crowned, it is surmised, by a Norman keep, there is one small piece of stonework. These earthworks have been considered Saxon, but later opinion labels them post-Conquest. In the time of the Domesday Survey the Seigniory of Holderness was held by Drogo de Bevere, a Flemish adventurer who joined in the Norman invasion of England and received his extensive fief from the Conqueror. He also was given the King's niece in marriage as a mark of special favour; but having for some reason seen fit to poison her, he fled from England, it is said, during the last few months of William's reign. The Barony of Holderness was forfeited, but Drogo was never captured.
[A worked flint was found in the moat not long ago by Dr. J. L. Kirk, of Pickering.]
Poulson, the historian of Holderness, states that Henry III. gave orders for the destruction of Skipsea Castle about 1220, the Earl of Albemarle, its owner at that time, having been in rebellion. When Edward II. ascended the throne, he recalled his profligate companion Piers Gaveston, and besides creating him Baron of Wallingford and Earl of Cornwall, he presented this ill-chosen favourite with the great Seigniory of Holderness.
Going southwards from Skipsea, we pass through Atwick, with a cross on a large base in the centre of the village, and two miles further on come to Hornsea, an old-fashioned little town standing between the sea and the Mere. This beautiful sheet of fresh water comes as a surprise to the stranger, for no one but a geologist expects to discover a lake in a perfectly level country where only tidal creeks are usually to be found. Hornsea Mere may eventually be reached by the sea, and yet that day is likely to be put further off year by year on account of the growth of a new town on the shore.
The scenery of the Mere is quietly beautiful. Where the road to Beverley skirts its margin there are glimpses of the shimmering surface seen through gaps in the trees that grow almost in the water, many of them having lost their balance and subsided into the lake, being supported in a horizontal position by their branches. The islands and the swampy margins form secure breeding-places for the countless water-fowl, and the lake abounds with pike, perch, eel, and roach.
Hornsea Mere
It was the excellent supply of fish yielded by Hornsea Mere that led to a hot discussion between the neighbouring Abbey of Meaux and St. Mary's Abbey at York. In the year 1260 William, eleventh Abbot of Meaux, laid claim to fishing rights in the southern half of the lake, only to find his brother Abbot of York determined to resist the claim. The cloisters of the two abbeys must have buzzed with excitement over theimpasseand relations became so strained that the only method of determining the issue was by each side agreeing to submit to the result of a judicial combat between champions selected by the two monasteries. Where the fight took place I do not know, and the number of champions is not mentioned in the record. It is stated that a horse was first swum across the lake, and stakes fixed to mark the limits of the claim. On the day appointed the combatants chosen by each abbot appeared properly accoutred, and they fought from morning until evening, when, at last, the men representing Meaux were beaten to the ground, and the York abbot retained the whole fishing rights of the Mere.
Hornsea has a pretty church with a picturesque tower built in between the western ends of the aisles. An eighteenth-century parish clerk utilized the crypt for storing smuggled goods, and was busily at work there on a stormy night in 1732, when a terrific blast of wind tore the roof off the church. The shock, we are told, brought on a paralytic seizure of which he died.
By the churchyard gate stands the old market-cross, recently set up in this new position and supplied with a modern head.
As we go towards Spurn Head we are more and more impressed with the desolate character of the shore. The tide may be out, and only puny waves tumbling on the wet sand, and yet it is impossible to refrain from feeling that the very peacefulness of the scene is sinister, and the waters are merely digesting their last meal of boulder-clay before satisfying a fresh appetite.
The busy town of Hornsea Beck, the port of Hornsea, with its harbour and pier, its houses, and all pertaining to it, has entirely disappeared since the time of James I., and so also has the place called Hornsea Burton, where in 1334 Meaux Abbey held twenty-seven acres of arable land. At the end of that century not one of those acres remained. The fate of Owthorne, a village once existing not far from Withernsea, is pathetic. The churchyard was steadily destroyed, until 1816, when in a great storm the waves undermined the foundations of the eastern end of the church, so that the walls collapsed with a roar and a cloud of dust.
Twenty-two years later there was scarcely a fragment of even the churchyard left, and in 1844, the Vicarage and the remaining houses were absorbed, and Owthorne was wiped off the map.
The peninsula formed by the Humber is becoming more and more attenuated, and the pretty village of Easington is being brought nearer to the sea, winter by winter. Close to the church, Easington has been fortunate in preserving its fourteenth-century tithe-barn covered with a thatched roof. The interior has that wonderfully imposing effect given by huge posts and beams suggesting a wooden cathedral.
At Kilnsea the weak bank of earth forming the only resistance to the waves has been repeatedly swept away and hundreds of acres flooded with salt water, and where there are any cliffs at all, they are often not more than fifteen feet high.
BEVERLEY
When the great bell in the southern tower of the Minster booms forth its deep and solemn notes over the city of Beverley, you experience an uplifting of the mind—a sense of exaltation greater, perhaps, than even that produced by an organ's vibrating notes in the high vaulted spaces of a cathedral.
The Market-place, Beverley
Beverley has no natural features to give it any attractiveness, for it stands on the borders of the level plain of Holderness, and towards the Wolds there is only a very gentle rise. It depends, therefore, solely upon its architecture. The first view of the city from the west as we come over the broad grassy common of Westwood is delightful. We are just sufficiently elevated to see the opalescent form of the Minster, with its graceful towers rising above the more distant roofs, and close at hand the pinnacled tower of St. Mary's showing behind a mass of dark trees. The entry to the city from this direction is in every way prepossessing, for the sunny common is succeeded by a broad, tree lined road, with old-fashioned houses standing sedately behind the foliage, and the end of the avenue is closed by the North Bar—the last of Beverley's gates. It dates from 1410, and is built of very dark red brick, with one arch only, the footways being taken through the modern houses, shouldering it on each side. Leland's account and the town records long before his day tell us that there were three gates, but nothing remains of 'Keldgate barr' and the 'barr de Newbygyng.'
We go through the archway and find ourselves in a wide street with the beautiful west end of St. Mary's Church on the left, quaint Georgian houses, and a dignified hotel of the same period on the opposite side, while straight ahead is the broad Saturday Market with its very picturesque 'cross.' The cross was put up in 1714 by Sir Charles Hotham, Bart., and Sir Michael Warton, Members of Parliament for the Corporation at that time.
Without the towers the exterior of the Minster gives me little pleasure, for the Early English chancel and greater and lesser transepts, although imposing and massive, are lacking in proper proportion, and in that deficiency suffer a loss of dignity. The eulogies so many architects and writers have poured out upon the Early English work of this great church, and the strangely adverse comments the same critics have levelled at the Perpendicular additions, do not blind me to what I regard as a most strange misconception on the part of these people. The homogeneity of the central and eastern portions of the Minster is undeniable, but because what appears to be the design of one master-builder of the thirteenth century was apparently carried out in the short period of twenty years, I do not feel obliged to consider the result beautiful.
In the Perpendicular work of the western towers everything is in graceful proportion, and nothing from the ground to the top of the turrets, jars with the wonderful dignity of their perfect lines.
A few years before the Norman Conquest a central tower and a presbytery were added to the existing building by Archbishop Cynesige. The 'Frenchman's' influence was probably sufficiently felt at that time to give this work the stamp of Norman ideas, and would have shown a marked advance on the Romanesque style of the Saxon age, in which the other portions of the buildings were put up. After that time we are in the dark as to what happened until the year 1188, when a disaster took place of which there is a record:
'In the year from the incarnation of Our Lord 1188, this church was burnt, in the month of September, the night after the Feast of St. Matthew the Apostle, and in the year 1197, the sixth of the ides of March, there was an inquisition made for the relics of the blessed John in this place, and these bones were found in the east part of his sepulchre, and reposited; and dust mixed with mortar was found likewise, and re-interred.'
This is a translation of the Latin inscription on a leaden plate discovered in 1664, when a square stone vault in the church was opened and found to be the grave of the canonized John of Beverley. The picture history gives us of this remarkable man, although to a great extent hazy with superstitious legend, yet shows him to have been one of the greatest and noblest of the ecclesiastics who controlled the Early Church in England. He founded the monastery at Beverley about the year 700, on what appears to have been an isolated spot surrounded by forest and swamp, and after holding the See of York for some twelve years, he retired here for the rest of his life. When he died, in 721, his memory became more and more sacred, and his powers of intercession were constantly invoked. The splendid shrine provided for his relics in 1037 was encrusted with jewels and shone with the precious metals employed. Like the tomb of William the Conqueror at Caen, it disappeared long ago. After the collapse of the central tower to its very foundations came the vast Early English reconstruction of everything except the nave, which was possibly of pre-Conquest date, and survived until the present Decorated successor took its place. Much discussion has centred round certain semicircular arches at the back of the triforium, whose ornament is unmistakably Norman, suggesting that the early nave was merely remodelled in the later period. The last great addition to the structure was the beautiful Perpendicular north porch and the west end—the glory of Beverley. The interior of the transepts and chancel is extremely interesting, but entirely lacking in that perfection of form characterizing York.
A magnificent range of stalls crowned with elaborate tabernacle work of the sixteenth century adorns the choir, and under each of the sixty-eight seats are carved misereres, making a larger collection than any other in the country. The subjects range from a horrible representation of the devil with a second face in the middle of his body to humorous pictures of a cat playing a fiddle, and a scold on her way to the ducking-stool in a wheel-barrow, gripping with one hand the ear of the man who is wheeling her.
In the north-east corner of the choir, built across the opening to the lesser transept on that side, is the tomb of Lady Eleanor FitzAllen, wife of Henry, first Lord Percy of Alnwick. It is considered to be, without a rival, the most beautiful tomb in this country. The canopy is composed of sumptuously carved stone, and while it is literally encrusted with ornament, it is designed in such a masterly fashion that the general effect, whether seen at a distance or close at hand, is always magnificent. The broad lines of the canopy consist of a steep gable with an ogee arch within, cusped so as to form a base at its apex for an elaborate piece of statuary. This is repeated on both sides of the monument. On the side towards the altar, the large bearded figure represents the Deity, with angels standing on each side of the throne, holding across His knees a sheet. From this rises a small undraped figure representing Lady Eleanor, whose uplifted hands are held in one of those of her Maker, who is shown in the act of benediction with two fingers on her head.
In the north aisle of the chancel there is a very unusual double staircase. It is recessed in the wall, and the arcading that runs along the aisle beneath the windows is inclined upwards and down again at a slight angle, similar to the rise of the steps which are behind the marble columns. This was the old way to the chapter-house, destroyed at the Dissolution, and is an extremely fine example of an Early English stairway. Near the Percy chapel stands the ancient stone chair of sanctuary, or frith-stool. It has been broken and repaired with iron clamps, and the inscription upon it, recorded by Spelman, has gone. The privileges of sanctuary were limited by Henry VIII, and abolished in the reign of James I; but before the Dissolution malefactors of all sorts and conditions, from esquires and gentlewomen down to chapmen and minstrels, frequently came in undignified haste to claim the security of St. John of Beverley. Here is a case quoted from the register by Mr. Charles Hiatt in his admirable account of the Minster:
'John Spret, Gentilman, memorandum that John Spret, of Barton upon Umber, in the counte of Lyncoln, gentilman, com to Beverlay, the first day of October the vii yer of the reen of Keing Herry vii and asked the lybertes of Saint John of Beverlay, for the dethe of John Welton, husbondman, of the same town, and knawleg [acknowledge] hymselff to be at the kyllyng of the saym John with a dagarth, the xv day of August.'
On entering the city we passed St. Mary's, a beautiful Perpendicular church which is not eclipsed even by the major attractions of the Minster. At the west end there is a splendid Perpendicular window flanked by octagonal buttresses of a slightly earlier date, which are run up to a considerable height above the roof of the nave, the upper portions being made light and graceful, with an opening on each face, and a pierced parapet. The tower rises above the crossing, and is crowned by sixteen pinnacles.
In its general appearance the large south porch is Perpendicular, like the greater part of the church, but the inner portion of its arch is Norman, and the outer is Early English. One of the pillars of the nave is ornamented just below the capital with five quaint little minstrels carved in stone. Each is supported by a bold bracket, and each is painted. The musical instruments are all much battered, but it can be seen that the centre figure, who is dressed as an alderman, had a harp, and the others a pipe, a lute, a drum, and a violin. From Saxon times there had existed in Beverley a guild of minstrels, a prosperous fraternity bound by regulations, which Poulson gives at length in his monumental work on Beverley. The minstrels played at aldermen's feasts, at weddings, on market-days, and on all occasions when there was excuse for music.
ALONG THE HUMBER
The atrophied corner of Yorkshire that embraces the lowest reaches of the Humber is terminated by a mere raised causeway leading to the wider patch of ground dominated by Spurn Head lighthouse. This long ridge of sand and shingle is all that remains of a very considerable and populous area possessing towns and villages as recently as the middle of the fourteenth century.
Far back in the Middle Ages the Humber was a busy waterway for shipping, where merchant vessels were constantly coming and going, bearing away the wool of Holderness and bringing in foreign goods, which the Humber towns were eager to buy. This traffic soon demonstrated the need of some light on the point of land where the estuary joined the sea, and in 1428 Henry VI granted a toll on all vessels entering the Humber in aid of the first lighthouse put up about that time by a benevolent hermit.
No doubt the site of this early structure has long ago been submerged. The same fate came upon the two lights erected on Kilnsea Common by Justinian Angell, a London merchant, who received a patent from Charles II to 'continue, renew, and maintain' two lights at Spurn Point.
In 1766 the famous John Smeaton was called upon to put up two lighthouses, one 90 feet and the other 50 feet high. There was no hurry in completing the work, for the foundations of the high light were not completed until six years later. The sea repeatedly destroyed the low light, owing to the waves reaching it at high tide. Poulson mentions the loss of three structures between 1776 and 1816. The fourth was taken down after a brief life of fourteen years, the sea having laid the foundations bare. As late as the beginning of last century the illumination was produced by 'a naked coal fire, unprotected from the wind,' and its power was consequently most uncertain.
Smeaton's high tower is now only represented by its foundations and the circular wall surrounding them, which acts as a convenient shelter from wind and sand for the low houses of the men who are stationed there for the lifeboat and other purposes.
The present lighthouse is 30 feet higher than Smeaton's, and is fitted with the modern system of dioptric refractors, giving a light of 519,000 candle-power, which is greater than any other on the east coast of England. The need for a second structure has been obviated by placing the low lights half-way down the existing tower. Every twenty seconds the upper light flashes for one and a half seconds, being seen in clear weather at a distance of seventeen nautical miles.
In the Middle Ages great fortunes were made on the shores on the Humber. Sir William de la Pole was a merchant of remarkable enterprise, and the most notable of those who traded at Ravenserodd. It was probably owing to his great wealth that his son was made a knight-banneret, and his grandson became Earl of Suffolk. Another of the De la Poles was the first Mayor of Hull, and seems to have been no less opulent than his brother, who lent large sums of money to Edward III, and was in consequence appointed Chief Baron of the Exchequer and also presented with the Lordship of Holderness.
The story of Ravenser, and the later town of Ravenserodd, is told in a number of early records, and from them we can see clearly what happened in this corner of Yorkshire. Owing to a natural confusion from the many different spellings of the two places, the fate of the prosperous port of Ravenserodd has been lost in a haze of misconception. And this might have continued if Mr. J. R. Boyle had not gone exhaustively into the matter, bringing together all the references to the Ravensers which have been discovered.
There seems little doubt that the first place called Ravenser was a Danish settlement just within the Spurn Point, the name being a compound of the raven of the Danish standard, and eyr or ore, meaning a narrow strip of land between two waters. In an early Icelandic saga the sailing of the defeated remnant of Harold Hardrada's army from Ravenser, after the defeat of the Norwegians at Stamford Bridge, is mentioned in the lines:
From this event of 1066 Ravenser must have remained a hamlet of small consequence, for it is not heard of again for nearly two centuries, and then only in connexion with the new Ravenser which had grown on a spit of land gradually thrown up by the tide within the spoon-shaped ridge of Spurn Head. On this new ground a vessel was wrecked some time in the early part of the thirteenth century, and a certain man—the earliest recorded Peggotty—converted it into a house, and even made it a tavern, where he sold food and drink to mariners. Then three or four houses were built near the adapted hull, and following this a small port was created, its development being fostered by William de Fortibus, Earl of Albemarl, the lord of the manor, with such success that, by the year 1274, the place had grown to be of some importance, and a serious trade rival to Grimsby on the Lincolnshire coast. To distinguish the two Ravensers the new place, which was almost on an island, being only connected with the mainland by a bank composed of large yellow boulders and sand, was called Ravenser Odd, and in the Chronicles of Meaux Abbey and other records the name is generally written Ravenserodd. The original place was about a mile away, and no longer on the shore, and it is distinguished from the prosperous port as Ald Ravenser. Owing, however, to its insignificance in comparison to Ravenserodd, the busy port, it is often merely referred to as Ravenser, spelt with many variations.
The extraordinarily rapid rise of Ravenserodd seems to have been due to a remarkable keenness for business on the part of its citizens, amounting, in the opinion of the Grimsby traders, to sharp practice. For, being just within Spurn Head, the men of Ravenserodd would go out to incoming vessels bound for Grimsby, and induce them to sell their cargoes in Ravenserodd by all sorts of specious arguments, misquoting the prices paid in the rival town. If their arguments failed, they would force the ships to enter their harbour and trade with them, whether they liked it or not. All this came out in the hearing of an action brought by the town of Grimsby against Ravenserodd. Although the plaintiffs seem to have made a very good case, the decision of the Court was given in favour of the defendants, as it had not been shown that any of their proceedings had broken the King's peace.
The story of the disaster, which appears to have happened between 1340 and 1350, is told by the monkish compiler of the Chronicles of Meaux. Translated from the original Latin the account is headed:
'Concerning the consumption of the town of Ravensere Odd and concerning the effort towards the diminution of the tax of the church of Esyngton.
'But in those days, the whole town of Ravensere Odd.. was totally annihilated by the floods of the Humber and the inundations of the great sea ... and when that town of Ravensere Odd, in which we had half an acre of land built upon, and also the chapel of that town, pertaining to the said church of Esyngton, were exposed to demolition during the few preceding years, those floods and inundations of the sea, within a year before the destruction of that town, increasing in their accustomed way without limit fifteen fold, announcing the swallowing up of the said town, and sometimes exceeding beyond measure the height of the town, and surrounding it like a wall on every side, threatened the final destruction of that town. And so, with this terrible vision of waters seen on every side, the enclosed persons, with the reliques, crosses, and other ecclesiastical ornaments, which remained secretly in their possession and accompanied by the viaticum of the body of Christ in the hands of the priest, flocking together, mournfully imploring grace, warded off at that time their destruction. And afterwards, daily removing thence with their possession, they left that town totally without defence, to be shortly swallowed up, which, with a short intervening period of time by those merciless tempestuous floods, was irreparably destroyed.'
The traders and inhabitants generally moved to Kingston-upon-Hull and other towns, as the sea forced them to seek safer quarters.
When Henry of Lancaster landed with his retinue in 1399 within Spurn Head, the whole scene was one of complete desolation, and the only incident recorded is his meeting with a hermit named Matthew Danthorp, who was at the time building a chapel.
The very beautiful spire of Patrington church guides us easily along a winding lane from Easington until the whole building shows over the meadows.