Watton Priory barn - rescued from the brink.

Watton Priory was a Gilbertine 'double-house' i.e. a monastery with separate halves for canons and nuns. Although there are extensive earthworks, the only remains above ground are the prior's lodgings and a large monastic barn. Until recently this fine late mediaeval barn was utterly derelict and in a state of imminent collapse. I had heard, however, that the owners had plans to restore it - so over New Year we went to see what has been done. It is very pleasing to see the huge barn repaired, re-roofed and ready for use once again to hold livestock or produce.

January 2017 after restoration

According to Pastscape, there may have been an Anglo-Saxon nunnery (Vetadun) on the site from the 7th to 9th centuries. This is mentioned in Bede.  Watton Priory was founded in 1150 by one Eustace FitzJohn in penance for having joined the Scottish side in the Battle of the Standard at Northallerton in 1138 when King David of Scotland had sought to capitalise of the chaos of the civil war between Stephen and Matilda to grab lands in the North.  Although the Scots lost the battle they held on to gains in northern England and continued to hold sway in there for the next two decades. Eustace, who owned extensive lands in the North, decided to back David. The Minsters of York and Beverley were allied to King Stephen, and the East Riding remained in English hands. Eustace's gesture of 'contrition' was therefore presumably necessary to keep sweet the ecclesiastical powers in this area.

The founding nuns and monks came from Sempringham in Lincolnshire, mother house of the Gilbertine order - the only home-grown English religious order. Accounts of Watton's financial state are contradictory; it is said to have been the wealthiest Gilbertine house and also that it was notorious for its poverty. The Gilbertines were a small, poor order so perhaps both statements are true. Although it owned lands in the East and North Ridings (including at nearby Kilnwick)  the priory perhaps still did not own enough to make it viable. It was also defrauded out of possessions or provisions on more than one occasion. During the Pilgrimage of Grace the Prior also abandoned his flock, leaving them with virtually no money on which to live.

The Prior's lodging (R) and former Dining Hall (L)

Watton was extensively excavated in the 1890s revealing the plan of two separate cloisters and associated buildings. The barn itself stood apart, a short distance to the north. The priory church was not the one to be seen now to the south, which is a parish church dating from the Tudor period. The original church formed part of the original monastic buildings beside the cloister. The church would have been divided down the middle so that there was no contact between the men and women. The canons only had direct contact when giving a dying nun the last rites. Confessions were heard through a slit the length of a finger and the breadth of a thumb, which nuns could also occasionally use to talk to their parents.

The lack of much to see above ground is probably due to the absence of natural stone in this area, the buildings likely having been part brick built and the site haveling been quickly plundered after the Dissolution by neighbours desperate for this scarce commodity. No monastery  in the East Riding has retained significant above-ground remains (or castle, for that matter - cf the abbeys of North Yorkshire where native stone is abundant.

Watton Priory - plan from 1890s excavations

Aelred of Rievaulx's account of the 'Nun of Watton' suggests that life in this neglected Gilbertine backwater was not happy or pleasant for its inhabitants. The account details Abbot Aelred's investigation into an incident where the nuns reacted to an episode of sexual impropriety between a nun and a lay brother with shockingly sadistic violence. This episode occurred in the 12th century and no documents shed any further light on life at Watton after this date.

At the Dissolution, Watton passed into the possession of Robert Holgate, its last prior (he who had temporarily abandoned the Priory in the Pilgrimage of Grace) future Bishop of Llandaff and Archbishop of York).

The Priory remains are visible from the main Beverley to Driffield Road and are accessible via a path out of the back of the churchyard. The church itself is worth a visit and contains the 13th century grave slab of one of the priors of Watton. The layout of the priory can be traced easily from the substantial earthworks.

One May morning - the worst 48 hours in Hull's history

Queen Victoria Square, early morning 9th May 1941 before
demolition of the Prudential Building tower

Hull's burning sky-line

On a bright May morning 75 years ago today, the people of Hull awoke to a scene of utter devastation. During two nights of the fiercest bombardment of WW2, 400 people had died, hundreds were seriously hurt and 10,000 people had been made homeless. Some poorer districts of the town had been obliterated as they lay near to the docks and riverside industrial areas which were Hitler’s target. The main shopping area of Paragon, Bond, Prospect and King Edward Streets had become one mass of fire. Also bombed were the Infirmary, City Hall, Guildhall, Paragon Station, the Fire Station where three firemen were killed, and many other key structures.  The Prudential Building by Queen Victoria Square received a direct hit, killing 16 people who were sheltering there. Its landmark tower, left standing precariously after a direct hit, was was demolished at 9am next morning. The five major department stores had been destroyed. Ambulance drivers, many women, drove through walls of fire to reach victims and the streets were filled with people fleeing the flames. The city’s fire brigade dealt with 800 fires over the two nights. All telephone communication between East and West Hull had been cut. It was estimated that between 32,000 and 50,000 homes were damaged or destroyed. During 1941 up to a third of the population took to sleeping in the fields outside the city at night to avoid the bombing raids. The bodies of many who died in the May bombing were unidentifiable and 200 were buried in a mass grave in one ceremony. Such was the outpouring of emotion on that occasion the council vowed never to do so again unless it was absolutely unavoidable.

In proportion to its size, Hull endured the worst bombing of any city outside London and much of this occurred in those two horrific nights between 7^th and 9^th May 1941. 95% of Hull homes were damaged or destroyed by the end of the war, making 152,000 people homeless. 1200 people were killed. The cost of the damage was estimated at £20 million pounds and arguably Hull has never recovered economically. None has been known to people outside Hull until relatively recently as the MOD applied a D-notice to reporting of the Hull Blitz. The Government did not lift this until the 1970s. It is difficult to see what justification there was for this and it did a great injustice to survivors of the Hull blitz.

Andrew Marvell stands on his plinth in front
of the ruined Co-op building

Those who are quick to make derogatory remarks about Hull would do well to remember these things. 75 years is not a long time. Not only are there many still alive with vivid and terrifying memories of that time, but such events leave an indelible stain on a city’s collective psyche. The fact that Hull could not hold its head up and have its wartime suffering recognised by the nation has, I believe, contributed to the lack of pride the people of Hull seem feel in themselves to this day.  The country is still forgetting - inexplicably the BBC has left Hull out of its forthcoming series on Blitz Cities. It also had the very practical effect that Hull did not receive the assistance it needed to get itself back on its feet economically. So don’t knock Hull. Its people endured much suffering to ensure that you and the rest of this nation kept the freedom you still enjoy today.

Fleeing persecution and poverty: European migration to Hull in the late 19th century

Been looking at where people in Bulmer’s Directory for Hull (1892) came from as a window on where Hull traded with at the time. Certainly there were a number of merchants living in Hull who originated in places like Hamburg, Holland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway (along with several Italian icecream sellers!) But what I also discovered told a much more unhappy story. Alongside the wealthy European merchants who had based themselves in Hull there were large numbers of more humble tradespeople. A quick survey of the names told that the majority of these were Jewish people of Eastern European or German origin. Comparison with earlier trade directories shows that most of these people came to Hull in the second half of the 19^th century. Cross-referencing with 1891 census confirmed that they were mostly from Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and other parts of what was the Russian empire at the time, as well as from Prussia. They seem to have practiced a small number of similar trades, mainly jewellers/watchmakers/silversmiths, tailors, cabinet makers, footwear manufacturers and tobacconists. Many of the jewellers doubled up as pawnbrokers of which there were a huge number in Hull at the time. (A crown on the statue of King Billy in Market Place was made in 1788 by Jewish immigrant silversmiths and presented to the town by the Jewish community.)

Whilst the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis in the 20^th century is well-known, the wave of persecution by the Russian Empire in the 19^th century is less familiar. This reached a peak in the 1880s. The Russian empire implemented increasingly harsh restrictions on Jewish people, pushing them out of eastern parts of the empire and restricting them to the so-called ‘Pale of Settlement’. Forbidden from living in the large cities or the rural areas, they lived together in  predominantly Jewish settlements known as shtetlech. In the 1880s life became difficult for Jews even in the shtetlech. As a result many Jews to flee the countries of their birth for Western parts of Europe like France, Germany and Britain. The places of birth mentioned in the 1891 census include many of the shtetlech - Lvov (Ukraine), Kovna (Lithiuania), Wilna (Poland), Mariampol (Lithuania) and Kelm (Lithiuania) for example.

The Jewish immigrants integrated quickly into the life of the city, developing some of the city’s most well know businesses and being influential in local politics. Apparently three mayors are buried in the Delhi Street Jewish cemetery, which is remarkable considering that at its height the Hull Jewish community only numbered a couple of thousand. However, world history shows this people - who the Nazis sought to wipe off the face of the earth - have made a contribution out of all proportion to their numbers in almost every area of life – whether medicine, scientific discoveries, politics, literature or music. This was certainly true of the Jewish immigrants who settled across Yorkshire in the 19^th century.

Butterbumps and bitterns

In the vicinity of Weel there was a house named Butterbump Hall which was demolished in the 19th century. I thought this was a delightful name but wondered what a butterbump was. The answer gave another fascinating insight into the wildlife of the East Riding in times past. (See my previous post about beavers in Beverley)

Apparently a butterbump was an old Yorkshire name for a bittern. In my childhood, bittern were a bird of the south, coming no further north than East Anglia and the Fens. Only in the last decade or so have bittern returned to the East Riding where they are now regularly reported along the Hull valley. But they were once common when much of the East Riding was covered in fens and carr.

Nearby is another place name clue to the ornithological past. Storkhill neighboured Weel and is evidence of another vanished water bird that once frequented the area. White Stork have been extinct in Britain for many centuries.

Any other contributions of pieces of 'archaeo-ornithology' would be received with interest!

Some Hull place names explained

Bransholme - either Bran's water meadow ir water meadow of the boar (brandt) Old Norse. Mentioned in t :) e Doomsday book
Drypool - a dried up pool, also Dripol or Dridpol
Gipsyville - 20th cenury, after nearby factory that manufactured 'Gipsy Black' polish
Holderness - headland (nes) of the hold (nobleman) - Danish (cf Stadtholder, the name given to the Dutch monarchs)
Hull - formerly Wyk or Wyke, meaning an inlet or bay in Old Norse/Danish but now taking its name from the River Hull whose name may be Celtic as many Yorkshire rivers are. Interestingly the course of the river has changed considerably and there used to be an inlet of the Humber in the area of Wyke to the west of the river called Sayercryk, probably Anglian for 'sea creek' and corrupted to 'Sewer'. This is presumably the origin of the otherwise unattractively named 'Sewer Lane' in the Old Town.
Marfleet - the pool stream, ?Norse
Myton - the name of the original settlement, the Monks of Meaux Abbey built a grange here and named it Wyke. The name persist e.g. in Myton Bridge.
Sculcoates - Skuli's cottages, old Norse
Southcoates - possibly old Norse, Soti's cote (cottage)
Stoneferry - earlier Stanfordrak - Stanford probably meant the stony ford and rak is Norse for a strip or lane, although it is difficult to imagine the river being shallow enough to ford - perhaps the ford was across a tributary stream. Later the site of a ferry across the river.
Summergangs - a road 'gang' across the Ings which was only passable in summer, or a corruption of 'South mere' - either way an indication that this whole area was once much wetter. The whole Southcoates / Summergangs / Drypool area was called Ings because it all consisted of wet meadowland in the flood plain of the river. Summergangs became a large area of common pasture but was too wet for use in the winter until drains like Summergangs Dyke were built.
Wincolmlee - no-one really seems to know the origin of this place name but the fact there is also a Wincolmblee in Newcastle would seem to suggest a Scandinavian origin. I am still looking into Wilmington and Trippett.
Wyke - a corruption of Norse 'vik' meaning mouth or creek.

Yorkshire Crafts

Traditional Yorkshire Crafts

Rag rugs
Also known as clippy rugs, peg rugs and proddy mats, rag rugs were the original household recycling activity. They are made out of small scraps of cloth cut into strips which are pushed through a piece of sacking with a pointed wooden tool to form tufts. Often the colours were just randomly distributed but sometimes they were formed into brightly coloured geometrical designs. A large rag rug would be found in front of the range in many working class households, from minors cottages to Dales farmhouses. Smaller strips were used as draught excluders along the bottoms of doors and the Dent museum has some nice circular seat covers made by the same technique. The tradition seems to have been strongest in West Yorkshire where clipping and lengths of selvedge from the textile mills were widely available, but were also associated with fishing districts such as Whitby and were made across the Dales.

Quilting and Patchwork

A quilt from Yeadon, W.Yorks
in the Quilters Guild Collection

The quilting tradtion most strongly associated with the North East also extended into parts of Yorkshire. For reasons I have not been able to establish quilt making seems to be particularly strong in mining areas, whether the coal mines of the North East, the Scottish lowlands, South Wales or the leadmines of Swaledale. They also stretched into neighbouring rural areas like Weardale and the Scottish borders. Many Yorkshire quilts are of the strippy type or the distinctive monochrome white and turkey red quilt. In fishing districts women often wore quilted petticoats, whose designs were drawn from wholecloth quilts. The Beamish museum holds examples from the northern parts of Yorkshire and examples are also held by small local museums like the Swaledale Museum in Reeth and the Beck Isle museum in Pickering.

Knitting
There was a small industry in the Yorkshire Dales in the 19th century knitting socks, caps, gloves and that kind of thing. I can remember when I was trying to learn to knit as a child being told by my grandad that it was 'like the Terrible Knitters of Dent'. 'Terrible' in this instance meant very skilled and fast. Knitting for Dent folk was definitely not a hobby but a desperate attempt to make ends meet in this most isolated of dales, where most households had to supplement the meagre income from hill-farming . All the family knitted, continuing knitting in the dark and even under the bedcovers when the candles had gone out. The women knitted as they walked around and performed domestic tasks. They could knit at an immense speed, knitting in time to traditional knitting songs and counting with the Dales counting systems used by shepherds to count their sheep. The use of these systems stretches across the Dales and Cumbria and share similarities with Welsh, suggesting that

Knitters in front of the Parish Church, Dent

they date back to pre-Roman times when a Brythonic language was used by the Celtic peoples of this area. They used traditional goosewing knitting sticks tucked into the belt to hold the needle. Dent folk were too pooorr to afford proper needles and made them instead from wire bought from the hardware shop. They sharpened these on the stones of the fireplaces. Apparently marks left by this process can still be seen in some farmhouses in the Dale. Whilst walking, the abllolf wool wwas hung from the waist on a clew hook. They made both plain, coarse every-day items and high-quality fine, patterned items which share similarities with the Sanquhar and Fairisle traditions. These tended to be in a two-colour scheme of natural white and dark wools  Good examples can be seen in the Reeth, Hawes and Dent museums.

In quite a separate tradition, the wives of fishermen along the coast knitted ganseys for their men

Hull fishermen wearing ganseys

folk.  Although the word gansey derives from Guernsey, Yorkshire was definitely the centre of production of ganseys although they were worn in some ither fishing communities like the east coast of Scotland. It is likely that the herring fleets who travelled to Yorkshire ports each year brought the knitting tradition with them, as girls also came down to gut and clean the fish landed. Each Yorkshire village hand its own style (e.g. Staithes, Scarborough, Filey, Flamborough) and each family its own variant on this pattern. If a fisherman drowned, those who found the body would know which village and family he belonged to from the design of his gansey. They were usually navy blue although a Sunday best one would be in a different colour. They were knitted in the round - tight fitting and with a high neck to keep out the elements. The designs reflected marine life, with anchors, ropes, waves, herringbone, flags and other symbols linked to the sea. Whilst walking balls of wool were carried on a clew-hook from the belt. In the Dales, knitters preferered to use a goose-wing knitting stick tucked into a ordinary belt. Designs still exist from places like Filey and Flamborough, where there is still a business selling traditional ganseys and the fishermen on their cobbles still wear traditional ganseys. Examples can be seen in places such as the Filey and Whitby museums. They were won with nothing underneath and just a neckerchief to stop chafing around the neck. Like the Dales knitters, knitters used a knitting stick and belt. Hull Maritime Museum holds a knitting stick carved in the shape of a fish.

Hattersley Loom (Copyright
Clem Rutter, used under creative
commons licence)

Weaving
The whole economy of West Yorkshire came to depend on woollen cloth production by the great mills but originally this was a small-scale domestic activity as it still is in the Western Isles. It is curious to note that the weaving of tweed, which is so associated with the Isle of Harris now, was acrtually introduced by a Yorkshireman on Hattersley looms developed in the county. There is little left of the hand weaving tradition in.Yorkshire now, but you can still see the old weavers houses in places like Holmfirth with long rows of windows in the upper stories. In Leeds you can also see the Cloth Halls where the weavers brought their cloth to sell, along with inns where they each merchant would trade their cloth.

Hull - not just about fish

Fishing may be what many people associate with Hull but it was a relatively insignificant part of the history and economy of the city before the 20th century. For most of its history, Kingston upon Hull has been a city built on European trade.

Wilberforce House, birthplace of the abolitionist, built in
1656 for the Listers, a wealthy merchant family
(Copyright Bernard Sharp, used under creative commons
licence)

The history of Hull is all about its geography. On the north bank of the wide Humber estuary on the east coast of England it faced the Low Countries and Germany with ports like Antwerp, Rotterdam and Hamburg. It also had ready access to the Nordic countries, the Baltic and Russia. Hull stands at the mouth of the smaller River Hull where it drains into the Humber. It was the town's proximity to the river Hull which gave Hull its initial prosperity, as wool travelled down the river from the lands of Meaux Abbey across the East Riding and was exported out of the port of Wyke (Hull). This came to the attention of the King who acquired Wyke for himself and granted it a Royal Charter in 1299, making it 'Kingston upon Hull'. Hull became part of the great Hanseatic league which had a virtual monopoly on trade in the Baltic, and imported timber, tar, resin, flax and hemp required for ship building, metal ores from Sweden and Scandinavian furs in exchange for cloth and grain. Another major import was wine. By the seventeenth century the influence of the Hanseatic league was waning but the fortunes of the Hull merchants continued to rise.

During the Industrial Revolution  Hull's position on the river Humber had become the more important geographical factor. The cloth produced in the mills of West Yorkshire, coal from the South Yorkshire mines, lead from the Dales and steel from Sheffield all flowed down the Ouse and Trent rivers via Hull to Germany, the Low Countries, Sweden, the Baltic ports and Russia.  These long-standing European trade links, although affected by wars in Europe from time to time, were much more consistent than the notoriously unstable American cotton trade, where slumps brought hardship and starvation to large parts of the Lancashire population. This was perhaps partly due to the diversity of ports which Hull traded with meaning merchants could tranfer trade in time of war - although the vessels used were often designed for a particular route such as the Hull to Hamburg route.

Unsurprisingly Hull became a major centre of ship-building. The materials required for this like tar, hemp and timber were imported by the Hull merchants. Hull shipbuilders built some very well known vessels, including the 'Bounty' of mutiny fame. Each merchant family had his staithe on the west bank of the river with its warehouse. Behind the merchants built fine houses which faced onto the High Street. This layout is still visible today. You can view the cobbled Bishop's Staithe and Blaydes' Staithe leading down to the riverside and the grand houses belonging to the Maister, Blaydes and Wilberforce families. You can also view the old dry docks by Myton Bridge and on Dock Office row where it was entirely natural to see the prow of a ship poking out between two houses.

Prince Street Hull (Copyright Paul Harrop
used under creative commons licence)

The late 18th and early 19th centuries were the peak of prosperity for the city and this is reflected by the number of fine Regency houses around the Old Town. The town walls had to be removed to give the population more room to expand. The merchants and ship owners moved out to desirable addresses in the suburbs like Anlaby Road, Coltman Street and Cottingham. The town had a flourishing social life with several theatres, botanic gardens, etc. The ancient Hull Grammar School educated the likes of William Wilberforce while new colleges like Kingston College, Hull College and Hymers College were founded to meet the needs and aspirations of this burgeoning merchant class. The city was home to many grand civic buildings. Fittingly, one of the finest buildings in the town was the new Dock Offices proudly positioned by the lock between Prince's and Queen's Docks. Hull merchants invested their money in all the enterprises of the Victorian era like trams and the Hull and Barnsley Railway. Altogether the Hull merchants were a highly influential and prosperous group in the 19th century on both a local and a national level.

Hull also developed a number of manufacturing industries of its own and it is interesting to see how these apparently disparate industries sprang up. For example, Hull's rapeseed oil industry developed into the paint industries which used oils in their production and alongside this was a trade in brush manufacture. 'Humbrol' of Airfix model fame was originally the Humber Oil Company. Crown Paint is also based in Hull. Cod liver oil which improved the nutrition of generations of British children for was first manufactured by Mr Smith and his Nephew - a FTSE 100 company still based in the city. It was also a centre of corn milling and this evolved into a starch industry. This is where Reckitt and Coleman began. They became one of the cities biggest employers and manufacturers of dozens of iconic British brands like Brasso and Dettol. Close to Reckitt's Dansom Lane factory stands a building which was a large nineteenth century corn mill and further along Holderness Road is the wind-powered mill that belonged to J. Arthur Rank's father Joseph.



Secretaire bookcase by
Mordecai Kitching of Hull

Hull was a centre of very fine cabinet making and of the manufacture of church organs which may be linked not only to its trade in timber but also to close cultural links and flow of skills between Hull and the great musical centres of Germany, the Netherlands and the Baltic. Hull was also home to fine watch and clockmakers, jewellers and silversmiths. Many of the highly workers in these small industries were refugees fleeing antiSemitic persecution in Eastern Europe.

Thus a visitor to nineteenth century Hull would have been struck by a culturally vibrant, properous and cosmopolitan city whose merchants proudly displayed their new-found wealth in fine civic and commercial buildings and in infrastructure like new railways, trams and docks. If Hull is to recover her civic pride I feel her citizens need to rediscover and connect with this great mercantile past and the associated trade in ideas, arts, culture and skills which came with it from Northern Europe.