A Month in Yorkshire
by Walter White · English · Gutenberg #35933 · 656,708 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: A Month in Yorkshire
Author: Walter White
Release date: April 22, 2011 [eBook #35933]
Language: English
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A MONTH IN YORKSHIRE.
[Illustration: YORKSHIRE.]
A
MONTH IN YORKSHIRE.
BY
WALTER WHITE,
AUTHOR OF "A LONDONER'S WALK TO THE LAND'S END," "ALL ROUND THE
WREKIN," AND OTHER BOOKS OF TRAVEL.
"Know most of the rooms of thy native country, before thou
goest over the threshold thereof; especially, seeing England
presents thee with so many observables."--FULLER.
FOURTH EDITION.
LONDON:
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.
1861.
[_The right of Translation is reserved._]
By the same Author.
A LONDONER'S WALK TO THE LAND'S END; AND A TRIP TO THE SCILLY
ISLES. _Second Edition._
ON FOOT THROUGH TYROL.
A JULY HOLIDAY IN SAXONY, BOHEMIA AND SILESIA.
NORTHUMBERLAND AND THE BORDER. _Second Edition._
ALL ROUND THE WREKIN. _Second Edition._
FOREWORD TO THE FOURTH EDITION.
The first two editions of this work had not long been published when I
was pelted with animadversions for the "scandalous misrepresentation"
conveyed in my report of a conversation held with a villager at
Burnsall; which conversation may be read in the twenty-second chapter.
My reply was, that I had set down less than was spoken--that I had
brought no accusation, not having even mentioned the "innocent-looking
country town" as situate in any one of the three Ridings--that what I
had seen, however, in some of the large towns, led me to infer that the
imputation (if such it were) would hardly fail to apply; and, moreover,
if the Yorkshire conscience felt uneasy, was I to be held responsible?
My explanation that the town in question was not in Yorkshire, was
treated as of none effect, and my censors rejoined in legal phrase, that
I had no case. So I went about for awhile under a kind of suspicion, or
as an unintentional martyr, until one day there met me two gentlemen
from Leeds, one of whom declared that he and others, jealous of their
county's reputation, and doubting not to convict me of error, had made
diligent inquiry and found to their discomfiture, that the assemblages
implied in the villager's remark, did actually take place within
Yorkshire itself. The discovery is not one to be proud of; but, having
been made, let the county strive to free itself from at least that
reproach.
Another censurable matter was my word of warning against certain inns
which had given me demonstration that their entertainment, regulated by
a sliding scale, went up on the arrival of a stranger. Yorkshire wrote
a flat denial of the implication to my publishers, and inclosed a copy
of what he called "his tariff," by way of proof, which would have been
an effectual justification had my grievance been an invention; but, as
it happened, the tariff presented testimony in my favour, by the
difference between its prices and those which I had been required to
pay.
I only notice this incident because of the general question, in which
all who travel are more or less interested. Why should an Englishman,
accustomed to equitable dealings while staying at home, be required to
submit so frequently to the reverse when journeying in his own country?
Shopkeepers are ready to sell socks, or saddles, or soap without an
increase of price on the plea that they may never see you again, and
without expecting you to fee their servants for placing the article
before you; and why should innkeepers claim a privilege to do otherwise?
The numerous complaints which every season's experience calls forth from
tourists, imply a want of harmony between "travelling facilities" and
the practice of licensed victuallers; and if English folk are to be
persuaded to travel in their own country, the sooner the required
harmony is established, the better. It would be very easy to exhibit a
table of charges and fees by which a tourist might ascertain cost
beforehand, and choose accordingly. Holland is a notoriously dear and
highly-taxed country, yet fivepence a day is all the charge that Dutch
innkeepers make for "attendance."
In one instance the discussion took a humorous turn:--the name of a
certain jovial host, with whom I had a talk in Swaledale, appeared
subscribed to a letter in the _Richmond Chronicle_, and as it furnishes
us with a fresh specimen of local dialect, I take leave to quote a few
passages therefrom. After expostulating with the editor for "prentan" a
letter which somebody had written in his "neame," the writer says, "but
between ye an' me, I believe this chap's been readin' a buke put out by
yan White, 'at was trailin' about t' Deales iv hay-time, an' afoare he
set off to gang by t' butter-tubs to t' Hawes, he ast me what
publick-house he was to gang te, an' I tell't him t' White Hart; an'
becoz he mebby fand t' shot rayther bigger than a lik'd, he's gi'en t'
landlord a wipe iv his buke aboot t' length of his bill, an' me aboot t'
girth o' me body--pity but he'd summat better to rite aboot; but nivver
heed, it nobbut shows 'at my meat agrees wi' me, an' 'at t' yal 'at I
brew 's naythur sour ner wake, an' 'at I drink my shar' on't mysel: but
if I leet on him, or can mak' oot t' chap 'at sent ye t' letter, I'll
gi' 'em an on-be-thinkin."
Sheffield, too, has not yet ceased to reprove me for having published
the obvious fact, that the town is frightfully smoky, and unclean in
appearance and in its talk. If I were to make any alteration in this
particular, it would be to give emphasis, not to lighten the
description. A town which permits its trade to be coerced by ignorance,
and where the ultimate argument of the working-classes is gunpowder or a
knock on the head, should show that the best means have been taken to
purify morals as well as the atmosphere and streets, before it claims to
be "nothing like so bad as is represented." But, the proverb which
declares that "people who eat garlic are always sure it doesn't smell,"
will perhaps never cease to be true.
Of the L14,000,000 worth of woollen and worsted goods exported in 1859,
Yorkshire supplied the largest portion; and still maintains its
reputation for "crafty wit and shrinking cloth," as shewn by the
increase in the manufacture of shoddy. One of the manufacturers at
Batley has made known in a printed pamphlet, that 50,000,000 pounds of
rags are at the present time annually converted into various kinds of
so-called woollen goods. We walk on shoddy as it covers our floors; and
we wear shoddy in our stockings and under-garments, as well as in capes
and overcoats. Turning to mineral products, we find that in 1859,
Yorkshire raised 1,695,842 tons of ironstone, and 8,247,000 tons of
coal, worth in round numbers L3,573,000. And with all this there is an
increase in the means and results of education, and an abatement of
pauperism: in 1820, the poor's-rate in Hull was seven shillings and
eightpence in the pound, in 1860, not more than eightpence.
And to mention facts of another kind:--by the digging of a drain on
Marston Moor, a heap of twenty-five or thirty skeletons was discovered,
around which the clay retained the form of the bodies, like a mould; a
bullet fell from one of the skulls, and in some the teeth were perfectly
sound, 213 years after the battle. At Malton, during a recent excavation
of the main street, one hundred yards of the Roman highway leading from
Derby to York were laid bare, three feet below the present surface.
Scarborough is building new batteries on her castled cliff, and
replacing old guns by new ones; and Hull is about to add to its
resources by the construction of a new dock. The much-needed harbour of
refuge is, however, not yet begun, as wrecks along the coast after
easterly storms lamentably testify.
This _Month in Yorkshire_ was the second of my books of home-travel; and
it was while rambling along the cliffs and over the hills of the famous
county, that I conceived it possible to interest others as well as
myself in the Past and the Present, in the delightful natural aspects
and the wonderful industry of our native country to a yet wider extent;
and therein I have not been disappointed. To the objection that my works
are useless as guide-books, I answer, that no intelligent reader will
find it difficult to follow my route: distances are mentioned with
sufficient accuracy, the length of my longest day's walk is recorded,
whereby any one, who knows his own strength, may easily plan each day's
journey in anticipation. By aid of the map which accompanies the present
volume either planning or reference will now be facilitated.
Next to ourselves, there is perhaps nothing so interesting to us as our
own country, which may be taken as a good reason why a book about
England finds favour with readers. For my part let me repeat a passage
from the foreword to the second edition:--"I know that I have an earnest
love for my subject; feeling proud of the name of Englishman, and the
freedom of thought, speech, and action therein involved; loving our
fields and lanes, our hills and moorlands, and the shores of our sea,
and delighting much to wander among them. Happy shall I be if I can
inspire the reader with the like emotions."
W. W
_London, March, 1861._
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE.
A SHORT CHAPTER TO BEGIN WITH 1
CHAPTER II.
Estuary of the Humber--Sunk Island--Land _versus_ Water--Dutch
Phenomena--Cleathorpes--Grimsby--Paul--River Freaks--Mud--
Stukeley and Drayton--Fluvial Parliament--Hull--The Thieves'
Litany--Docks and Drainage--More Dutch Phenomena--The High Church
--Thousands of Piles--The Citadel--The Cemetery--A Countryman's
Voyage to China--An Aid to Macadam 5
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 14
CHAPTER IV.
Northern Manners--Cottingham--The Romance of Baynard Castle--
Beverley--Yorkshire Dialect--The Farmers' Breakfast--Glimpses of
the Town--Antiquities and Constables--The Minster--Yellow Ochre--
The Percy Shrine--The Murdered Earl--The Costly Funeral--The
Sisters' Tomb--Rhyming Legend--The Fridstool--The Belfry 27
CHAPTER V.
A Scotchman's Observations--The Prospect--The Anatomy of Beverley
--Historical Associations--The Brigantes--The Druids--Austin's
Stone--The Saxons--Coifi and Paulinus--Down with Paganism--A Great
Baptism--St. John of Beverley--Athelstan and Brunanburgh--The
Sanctuary--The Conqueror--Archbishop Thurstan's Privileges--The
Sacrilegious Mayor--Battle of the Standard--St. John's Miracles--
Brigand Burgesses--Annual Football--Surrounding Sites--Watton and
Meaux--Etymologies--King Athelstan's Charter 33
CHAPTER VI.
The Great Drain--The Carrs--Submerged Forest--River Hull--Tickton
--Routh--Tippling Rustics--A Cooler for Combatants--The Blind
Fiddler--The Improvised Song--The Donkey Races--Specimens of
Yorkshiremen--Good Wages--A Peep at Cottage Life--Ways and Means--
A Paragraph for Bachelors--Hornsea Mere--The Abbots' Duel--Hornsea
Church--The Marine Hotel 40
CHAPTER VII.
Coast Scenery--A waning Mere, and wasting Cliffs--The Rain and the
Sea--Encroachment prevented--Economy of the Hotel--A Start on the
Sands--Pleasure of Walking--Cure for a bad Conscience--Phenomena
of the Shore--Curious Forms in the Cliffs--Fossil Remains--Strange
Boulders--A Villager's Etymology--Reminiscences of "Bonypart" and
Paul Jones--The last House--Chalk and Clay--Bridlington--One of
the Gipseys--Paul Jones again--The Sea-Fight--A Reminiscence of
Montgomery 48
CHAPTER VIII.
What the Boarding-House thought--Landslips--Yarborough House--The
Dane's Dike--Higher Cliffs--The South Landing--The Flamborough
Fleet--Ida, the Flamebearer--A Storm--A talk in a Limekiln--
Flamborough Fishermen--Coffee before Rum--No Drunkards--A
Landlord's Experiences--Old-fashioned Honesty 56
CHAPTER IX.
Men's and Women's Wages--The Signal Tower--The passing Fleet--The
Lighthouse--The Inland View--Cliff Scenery--Outstretching Reefs--
Selwick's Bay--Down to the Beach--Aspect of the Cliffs--The Matron
--Lessons in Pools--Caverns--The King and Queen--Arched
Promontories--The North Landing--The Herring-Fishers--Pleasure
Parties--Robin Lyth's Hole--Kirk Hole--View across little Denmark
--Speeton--End of the Chalk--Walk to Filey 60
CHAPTER X.
Old and New Filey--The Ravine--Filey Brig--Breaking Waves--Rugged
Cliffs--Prochronic Gravel--Gristhorp Bay--Insulated Column--Lofty
Cliffs--Fossil Plants--Red Cliff--Cayton Bay--Up to the Road--Bare
Prospect--Cromwell Hotel and Oliver's Mount--Scarborough--The
Esplanade--Watering-Place Phenomena--The Cliff Bridge--The Museum
--The Spa--The Old Town--The Harbour--The Castle Rock--The Ancient
Keep--The Prospect--Reminiscences: of Harold Hardrada; of
Pembroke's Siege; of the Papists' Surprise; of George Fox; of
Robin Hood--The One Artilleryman--Scarborough Newspapers--
Cloughton--The Village Inn, and its Guests--Tudds and Pooads 66
CHAPTER XI.
From Cloughton to Haiburn Wyke--The embowered Path--Approach to
the Sea--Rock, Water, and Foliage--Heavy Walking--Staintondale
Cliffs--The Undercliff--The Peak--Raven Hall--Robin Hood's Bay--A
Trespass--Alum Works--Waterfalls--Bay Town--Manners and Customs of
the Natives--Coal Trade--The Churchyard--Epitaphs--Black-a-moor--
Hawsker--Vale of Pickering--Robin Hood and Little John's Archery--
Whitby Abbey--Beautiful Ruin--St. Hilda, Wilfrid, and Coedmon--
Legends--A Fallen Tower--St. Mary's Church--Whitby--The Vale of
Esk--Specimens of Popular Hymns 78
CHAPTER XII.
Whitby's Attractions--The Pier--The River-Mouth--The Museum--
Saurians and Ammonites--An enthusiastic Botanist--Jet in the
Cliffs, and in the Workshop--Jet Carvers and Polishers--Jet
Ornaments--The Quakers' Meeting--A Mechanics' Institute--Memorable
Names--A Mooky Miner--Trip to Grosmont--The Basaltic Dike--
Quarries and Ironstone--Thrifty Cottagers--Abbeys and Hovels--A
Stingy Landlord--Egton Bridge--Eskdale Woods--The Beggar's Bridge 89
CHAPTER XIII.
To Upgang--Enter Cleveland--East Row--The first Alum-Maker--
Sandsend--Alum-Works--The huge Gap--Hewing the Alum Shale--
Limestone Nodules: Mulgrave Cement--Swarms of Fossils--Burning the
Shale--Volcanic Phenomena--From Fire to Water--The Cisterns--
Soaking and Pumping--The evaporating Pans--The Crystallizing
Process--The Roching Casks--Brilliant Crystals--A Chemical Triumph
--Rough Epsoms 97
CHAPTER XIV.
Mulgrave Park--Giant Wade--Ubba's Landing-place--The Boggle-
boggarts--The Fairy's Chase--Superstitions--The Knight of the Evil
Lake--Lythe--St. Oswald's Church--Goldsborough--Kettleness--Rugged
Cliffs and Beach--Runswick Bay--Hob-Hole--Cure for Whooping-cough
--Jet Diggers--Runswick--Hinderwell--Horticultural Ravine--
Staithes--A curious Fishing-town--The Black Minstrels--A close-
neaved Crowd--The Cod and Lobster--Houses washed away--Queer
back Premises--The Termagants' Duel--Fisherman's Talk--Cobles and
Yawls--Dutch and French Poachers--Tap-room Talk--Reminiscences
of Captain Cook 104
CHAPTER XV.
Last Day by the Sea--Boulby--Magnificent Cliffs--Lofthouse and
Zachary Moore--The Snake-killer--The Wyvern--Eh! Packman--
Skinningrave--Smugglers and Privateers--The Bruce's Privileges--
What the old Chronicler says--Story about a Sea-Man--The Groaning
Creek--Huntcliff Nab--Rosebury Topping--Saltburn--Cormorant
Shooters--Cunning Seals--Miles of Sands--Marske--A memorable Grave
--Redcar--The Estuary of Tees--Asylum Harbour--Recreations for
Visitors--William Hutton's Description--Farewell to the Sea 115
CHAPTER XVI.
Leave Redcar--A Cricket-Match--Coatham--Kirkleatham--The Old
Hospital--The Library--Sir William Turner's Tomb--Cook, Omai, and
Banks--The Hero of Dettingen--Yearby Bank--Upleatham--Guisborough
--Past and Present--Tomb of Robert Bruce--Priory Ruins--
Hemingford, Pursglove, and Sir Thomas Chaloner--Pretty Scenery--
The Spa--More Money, Less Morals--What George Fox's Proselytes did
--John Wesley's Preaching--Hutton Lowcross--Rustics of Taste--
Rosebury Topping--Lazy Enjoyment--The Prospect: from Black-a-moor
to Northumberland--Cook's Monument--Canny Yatton--The Quakers'
School--A Legend--Skelton--Sterne and Eugenius--Visitors from
Middlesbro'--A Fatal Town--Newton--Digger's Talk--Marton, Cook's
Birthplace--Stockton--Darlington 123
CHAPTER XVII.
Locomotive, Number One--Barnard Castle--Buying a Calf on Sunday--
Baliol's Tower--From Canute to the Duke of Cleveland--Historic
Scenery--A surprised Northumbrian--The bearded Hermit--Beauty of
Teesdale--Egliston Abbey--The Artist and his Wife--Dotheboys Hall
--Rokeby--Greta Bridge--Mortham Tower--Brignall Banks--A
Pilgrimage to Wycliffe--Fate of the Inns--The Felon Sow--A Journey
by Omnibus--Lartington--Cotherstone--Scandinavian Traces--
Romaldkirk--Middleton-in-Teesdale--Wild Scenery--High Force Inn--
The voice of the Fall 136
CHAPTER XVIII.
Early Morn--High Force--Rock and Water--A Talk with the Waitress--
Hills and Cottages--Cronkley Scar--The Weel--Caldron Snout--
Soothing Sound--Scrap from an Album--View into Birkdale--A Quest
for Dinner--A Westmoreland Farm--Household Matters--High Cope Nick
--Mickle Fell--The Boys' Talk--The Hill-top--Glorious Prospect--A
Descent--Solitude and Silence--A Moss--Stainmore--Brough--The
Castle Ruin--Reminiscences 146
CHAPTER XIX.
Return into Yorkshire--The Old Pedlar--Oh! for the Olden Time--
"The Bible, indeed!"--An Emissary--Wild Boar Fell--Shunnor Fell--
Mallerstang--The Eden--A Mountain Walk--Tan Hill--Brown Landscape
--A School wanted--Swaledale--From Ling to Grass--A Talk with Lead
Miners--Stonesdale--Work for a Missionary--Thwaite--A Jolly
Landlord--A Ruined Town--The School at Muker--A Nickname--
Buttertubs Pass--View into Wensleydale--Lord Wharncliffe's Lodge--
Simonstone--Hardraw Scar--Geological Phenomenon--A Frozen Cone--
Hawes 157
CHAPTER XX.
Bainbridge--"If you had wanted a wife"--A Ramble--Millgill Force--
Whitfell Force--A Lovely Dell--The Roman Camp--The Forest Horn,
and the old Hornblower--Haymaking--A Cockney Raker--Wensleydale
Scythemen--A Friend indeed--Addleborough--Curlews and Grouse--The
First Teapot--Nasty Greens--The Prospect--Askrigg--Bolton Castle--
Penhill--Middleham--Miles Coverdale's Birthplace--Jervaux Abbey--
Moses's Principia--Nappa Hall--The Metcalfes--The Knight and the
King--The Springs--Spoliation of the Druids--The great Cromlech--
Legend--An ancient Village--Simmer Water--An advice for Anglers--
More Legends--Counterside--Money-Grubbers--Widdale--Newby Head 165
CHAPTER XXI.
About Gimmer Hogs--Gearstones--Source of the Ribble--Weathercote
Cave--An Underground Waterfall--A Gem of a Cave--Jingle Pot--The
Silly Ducks--Hurtle Pool--The Boggart--A Reminiscence of the
Doctor--Chapel-le-Dale--Remarkable Scenery--Ingleborough--Ingleton
--Craven--Young Daniel Dove, and Long Miles--Clapham--Ingleborough
Cave--Stalactite and Stalagmite--Marvellous Spectacle--Pillar Hall
--Weird Music--Treacherous Pools--The Abyss--How Stalactite forms
--The Jockey Cap--Cross Arches--The Long Gallery--The Giant's Hall
--Mysterious Waterfall--A Trouty Beck--The Bar-Parlour--A Bradford
Spinner 177
CHAPTER XXII.
By Rail to Skipton--A Stony Town--Church and Castle--The Cliffords
--Wharfedale--Bolton Abbey--Picturesque Ruins--A Foot-Bath--Scraps
from Wordsworth--Bolton Park--The Strid--Barden Tower--The Wharfe
--The Shepherd Lord--Reading to Grandfather--A Cup of Tea--
Cheerful Hospitality--Trout Fishing--Gale Beck--Symon Seat--A Real
Entertainer--Burnsall--A Drink of Porter--Immoralities--
Threshfield--Kilnsey--The Crag--Kettlewell--A Primitive Village--
Great Whernside--Starbottom--Buckden--Last View of Wharfedale--
Cray--Bishopdale--A Pleasant Lane--Bolton Castle--Penhill--
Aysgarth--Dead Pastimes--Decrease of Quakers--Failure of a Mission
--Why and Wherefore--Aysgarth Force--Drunken Barnaby--Inroad of
Fashion 191
CHAPTER XXIII.
A Walk--Carperby--Despotic Hay-time--Bolton Castle--The Village--
Queen Mary's Prison--Redmire--Scarthe Nick--Pleasing Landscape--
Halfpenny House--Hart-Leap Well--View into Swaledale--Richmond--
The Castle--Historic Names--The Keep--St. Martin's Cell--Easby
Abbey--Beautiful Ruins--King Arthur and Sleeping Warriors--Ripon--
View from the Minster Tower--Archbishop Wilfrid--The Crypt--The
Nightly Horn--To Studley--Surprising Trick--Robin Hood's Well--
Fountains Abbey--Pop goes the Weasel--The Ruins--Robin Hood and
the Curtall Friar--To Thirsk--The Ancient Elm--Epitaphs 206
CHAPTER XXIV.
Sutton: a pretty Village--The Hambleton Hills--Gormire Lake--
Zigzags--A Table-Land--Boy and Bull Pup--Skawton--Ryedale--
Rievaulx Abbey--Walter L'Espec--A Charming Ruin--The Terrace--The
Pavilion--Helmsley--T' Boos--Kirkby Moorside--Helmsley Castle--A
River swallowed--Howardian Hills--Oswaldkirk--Gilling--Fairfax
Hall--Coxwold--Sterne's Residence--York--The Minster Tower--Yorke,
Yorke, for my monie--The Four Bars--The City Walls--The Ouse
Legend--Yorkshire Philosophical Society--Ruins and Antiquities--
St. Mary's Lodge 217
CHAPTER XXV.
By Rail to Leeds--Kirkstall Abbey--Valley of the Aire--Flight to
Settle--Giggleswick--Drunken Barnaby again--Nymph and Satyr--The
astonished Bagman--What do they Addle?--View from Castleber--
George Fox's Vision on Pendle Hill--Walk to Maum--Companions--
Horse versus Scenery--Talk by the Way--Little Wit, muckle Work--
Malham Tarn--Ale for Recompense--Malham--Hospitality--Gordale Scar
--Scenery versus Horse--Trap for Trout--A Brookside Musing--Malham
Grove--Source of the Aire--To Keighley 226
CHAPTER XXVI.
Keighley--Men in Pinafores--Walk to Haworth--Charlotte Bronte's
Birthplace--The Church--The Pew--The Tombstone--The Marriage
Register--Shipley--Saltaire--A Model Town--Household Arrangements
--I isn't the Gaffer--A Model Factory--Acres of Floors--Miles of
Shafting--Weaving Shed--Thirty Thousand Yards a Day--Cunning
machinery--First Fleeces--Shipley Feast--Scraps of Dialect--To
Bradford--Rival Towns--Yorkshire Sleuth-hounds--Die like a
Britoner 235
CHAPTER XXVII.
Bradford's Fame--Visit to Warehouses--A Smoky Prospect--Ways and
Means of Trade--What John Bull likes--What Brother Jonathan likes
--Vulcan's Head-quarters--Cleckheaton--Heckmondwike--Busy Traffic
--Mirfield--Robin Hood's Grave--Batley the Shoddyopolis--All the
World's Tatters--Aspects of Batley--A Boy capt--The Devil's Den--
Grinding Rags--Mixing and Oiling--Shoddy and Shoddy--Tricks with
Rags--The Scribbling Machine--Short Flocks, Long Threads--Spinners
and Weavers--Dyeing, Dressing, and Pressing--A Moral in Shoddy--A
surprise of Real Cloth--Iron, Lead, and Coal--To Wakefield--A
Disappointment--The Old Chapel--The Battle-field--To Barnsley--
Bairnsla Dialect--Sheffield 245
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Clouds of Blacks--What Sheffield was and is--A detestable Town--
Razors and Knives--Perfect Work, Imperfect Workmen--Foul Talk--How
Files are made--Good Iron, Good Steel--Breaking-up and Melting--
Making the Crucibles--Casting--Ingots--File Forgers--Machinery
Baffled--Cutting the Teeth--Hardening--Cleaning and Testing--
Elliott's Statue--A Ramble to the Corn-Law Rhymer's Haunt--Rivelin
--Bilberry gatherers--Ribbledin--The Port's Words--A Desecration--
To Manchester--A few Words on the Exhibition 256
CHAPTER XXIX.
A SHORT CHAPTER TO END WITH 266
A MONTH IN YORKSHIRE.
CHAPTER I.
A SHORT CHAPTER TO BEGIN WITH.
I had cheerful recollections of Yorkshire. My first lessons in
self-reliance and long walks were learned in that county. I could not
forget how, fresh from the south, I had been as much astonished at the
tall, stalwart forms of the men, their strange rustic dialect and rough
manners, as by their hearty hospitality. Nor could I fail to remember
the contrast between the bleak outside of certain farm-houses and the
rude homely comfort inside, where a ruddy turf fire glowed on the
hearth, and mutton hams, and oaten bread, and store of victual burdened
the racks of the kitchen ceiling. Nor the generous entertainment of more
than one old hostess in little roadside public-houses, who, when I
arrived at nightfall, weary with travel, would have me sit at the end of
the high-backed settle nearest the fire, or in the 'neukin' under the
great chimney, and bustle about with motherly kindness to get tea ready;
who, before I had eaten the first pile of cakes, would bring a second,
with earnest assurance that a "growing lad" could never eat too much;
who talked so sympathisingly during the evening--I being at times the
only guest--wondering much that I should be so far away from home: had I
no friends? where was I going? and the like; who charged me only
eighteenpence for tea, bed, and breakfast, and once slily thrust into my
pocket, at parting, a couple of cakes, which I did not discover till
half way across a snow-drifted moor, where no house was in sight for
many miles. All this, and much more which one does not willingly
forget, haunted my memory.
The wild scenery of the fells, the tame agricultural region, and the
smoky wapentakes, where commerce erects more steeples than religion,
were traversed during my rambles. While wandering in the neighbourhood
of Keighley, I had seen Charlotte Bronte's birthplace, long before any
one dreamed that she would one day flash as a meteor upon the gaze of
the "reading public." Rosebury Topping had become familiar to me in the
landscapes of Cleveland, and now a desire possessed me to get on the top
of that magnificent cone. In the villages round about its base I had
shared the pepper-cake of Christmas-tide; and falling in with the
ancient custom prevalent along the eastern coast from Humber to Tyne,
had eaten fried peas on Carlin Sunday--Mid-Lent of the calendar--ere the
discovery of that mineral wealth, now known to exist in such astonishing
abundance, that whether the British coal-fields will last long enough or
not to smelt all the ironstone of Cleveland, is no longer a question
with a chief of geologists. I had mused in the ruin where Richard the
Second was cruelly murdered, at Pontefract; had looked with proper
surprise at the Dropping Well, at Knaresborough, and into St. Robert's
Cave, the depository of Eugene Aram's terrible secret; had walked into
Wakefield, having scarcely outlived the fond belief that there the Vicar
once dwelt with his family; and when the guard pointed out the summits
as the coach rolled past on the way from Skipton to Kirkby Lonsdale, had
no misgivings as to the truth of the saying:
"Penigent, Whernside, and Ingleborough,
Are the three highest hills all England thorough."
Unawares, in some instances, I had walked across battlefields, memorable
alike in the history of the county, and of the kingdom; where marauding
Scots, dissolute Hainaulters, Plantagenets and Tudors, Cavalier and
Roundhead had rushed to the onslaught. Marston Moor awoke the proudest
emotions, notwithstanding my schoolboy recollections of what David Hume
had written thereupon; while Towton was something to wonder at, as
imagination flew back to the time when
"Palm Sunday chimes were chiming
All gladsome thro' the air,
And village churls and maidens
Knelt in the church at pray'r;
When the Red Rose and the White Rose
In furious battle reel'd;
And yeomen fought like barons,
And barons died ere yield.
When mingling with the snow-storm,
The storm of arrows flew;
And York against proud Lancaster
His ranks of spearmen threw.
When thunder-like the uproar
Outshook from either side,
As hand to hand they battled
From morn to eventide.
When the river ran all gory,
And in hillocks lay the dead,
And seven and thirty thousand
Fell for the White and Red.
* * * * *
When o'er the Bar of Micklegate
They changed each ghastly head,
Set Lancaster upon the spikes
Where York had bleached and bled.
* * * * *
There still wild roses growing--
Frail tokens of the fray--
And the hedgerow green bear witness
Of Towton field that day."
Did the decrepit old shambles, roofed with paving-flags, still encumber
the spacious market-place at Thirsk? Did the sexton at Ripon Minster
still deliver his anatomical lecture in the grim bone-house, and did the
morality of that sedate town still accord with the venerable adage, "as
true steel as Ripon rowels?" Was York still famous for muffins, or
Northallerton for quoits, cricket, and spell-and-nurr? and was its beer
as good as when Bacchus held a court somewhere within sight of the three
Ridings, and asked one of his attendants where that new drink, "strong
and mellow," was to be found? and
"The boon good fellow answered, 'I can tell
North-Allerton, in Yorkshire, doth excel
All England, nay, all Europe, for strong ale;
If thither we adjourn we shall not fail
To taste such humming stuff, as I dare say
Your Highness never tasted to this day.'"
Hence, when the summer sun revived my migratory instinct, I inclined to
ramble once more in Yorkshire. There would be no lack of the freshness
of new scenes, for my former wanderings had not led me to the coast, nor
to the finest of the old abbeys--those ruins of wondrous beauty, nor to
the remote dales where crowding hills abound with the picturesque. Here
was novelty enough, to say nothing of the people and their ways, and the
manifold appliances and results of industry which so eminently
distinguish the county, and the grand historical associations of the
metropolitan city, once the "other Rome," of which the old rhymester
says--
"Let London still the just precedence claim,
York ever shall be proud to be the next in fame."
I was curious, moreover, to observe whether the peculiar dialect or the
old habits were dying out quite so rapidly as some social and political
economists would have us believe.
Quaint old Fuller, among the many nuggets imbedded in his pages, has one
which implies that Yorkshire being the biggest is therefore the best
county in England. You may take six from the other thirty-nine counties,
and put them together, and not make a territory so large as Yorkshire.
The population of the county numbers nearly two millions. When within it
you find the distances great from one extremity to the other, and become
aware of the importance involved in mere dimensions. In no county have
Briton, Roman, and Dane left more evident traces, or history more
interesting waymarks. Speed says of it: "She is much bound to the
singular love and motherly care of Nature, in placing her under so
temperate a clime, that in every measure she is indifferently fruitful.
If one part of her be stone, and a sandy barren ground, another is
fertile and richly adorned with corn-fields. If you here find it naked
and destitute of woods, you shall see it there shadowed with forests
full of trees, that have very thick bodies, sending forth many fruitful
and profitable branches. If one place of it be moorish, miry, and
unpleasant, another makes a free tender of delight, and presents itself
to the eye full of beauty and contentive variety."
Considering, furthermore, that for two years in succession I had seen the
peasantry in parts of the north and south of Europe, and had come to the
conclusion (under correction, for my travel is brief) that the English
labourer, with his weekly wages, his cottage and garden, is better off
than the peasant proprietor of Germany and Tyrol,--considering this, I
wished to prove my conclusion, and therefore started hopefully for
Yorkshire.
And again, does not Emerson say, "a wise traveller will naturally choose
to visit the best of actual nations."
CHAPTER II.
Estuary of the Humber--Sunk Island--Land _versus_ Water--Dutch
Phenomena--Cleathorpes--Grimsby--Paul--River Freaks--Mud--
Stukeley and Drayton--Fluvial Parliament--Hull--The Thieves'
Litany--Docks and Drainage--More Dutch Phenomena--The High
Church--Thousands of Piles--The Citadel--The Cemetery--A
Countryman's Voyage to China--An Aid to Macadam.
As the _Vivid_ steamed past the Spurn lighthouse, I looked curiously at
the low sandy spit on which the tall red tower stands, scarcely as it
seems above the level of the water, thinking that my first walk would
perhaps lead thither. At sight of the Pharos, and of the broad estuary
alive with vessels standing in, the Yorkshiremen on board felt their
patriotism revive, and one might have fancied there was a richer twang
in their speech than had been perceptible in the latitude of London. A
few who rubbed their hands and tried to look hearty, vowed that their
future travels should not be on the sea. The _Vivid_ is not a very
sprightly boat, but enjoys or not, as the case may be, a reputation for
safety, and for sleeping-cabins narrower and more stifling than any I
ever crept into. But one must not expect too much when the charge for a
voyage of twenty-six hours is only six and sixpence in the chief cabin.
Not without reason does old Camden remark of the Humber, "it is a common
rendezvous for the greatest part of the rivers hereabouts," for it is a
noble estuary, notwithstanding that water and shore are alike muddy. It
is nearly forty miles long, with a width of more than two miles down to
about three leagues from the lighthouse, where it widens to six or seven
miles, offering a capacious entrance to the sea. The water has somewhat
of an unctuous appearance, as if overcharged with contributions of the
very fattest alluvium from all parts of Yorkshire. The results may be
seen on the right, as we ascend. There spreads the broad level of Sunk
Island, a noteworthy example of dry land produced by the co-operation of
natural causes and human industry. The date of its first appearance
above the water is not accurately known; but in the reign of Charles II.
it was described as three thousand five hundred acres of "drowned
ground," of which seven acres were enclosed by embankments; and was let
at five pounds a year. A hundred years later fifteen hundred acres were
under cultivation, producing a yearly rental of seven hundred pounds to
the lessee; but he, it is said, made but little profit, because of the
waste and loss occasioned by failure of the banks and irruptions of the
tides. In 1802 the island reverted to the Crown, and was re-let on
condition that all the salt marsh--nearly three thousand acres--which
was "ripe for embankment," should be taken in, and that a church and
proper houses should be built, to replace the little chapel and five
cottages which ministered as little to the edification as to the comfort
of the occupants. In 1833 the lease once more fell in, and the Woods and
Forests, wisely ignoring the middlemen, let the lands directly to the
'Sunk farmers,' as they are called in the neighbourhood, and took upon
themselves the construction and maintenance of the banks. A good road
was made, and bridges were built to connect the Island with the main,
and as the accumulations of alluvium still went on, another 'intake'
became possible in 1851, and now there are nearly 7000 acres, comprising
twenty-three farms, besides a few small holdings, worth more than
12,000_l._ of annual rent. It forms a parish of itself, and not a
neglected one; for moral reclamation is cared for as well as
territorial. The clergyman has a sufficient stipend; the parishioners
supplemented the grants made by Government and the Council of Education,
and have now a good schoolhouse and a competent schoolmaster.
The Island will continue to increase in extent and value as long as the
same causes continue to operate; and who shall set limits to them?
Already the area is greater than that described in the last report of
the Woods and Forests, which comprehends only the portion protected by
banks. The land when reclaimed is singularly fertile, and free from
stones, and proves its quality in the course of three or four years, by
producing spontaneously a rich crop of white clover. Another fact,
interesting to naturalists, was mentioned by Mr. Oldham in a report read
before the British Association, at their meeting in Hull. "When the
land, or rather mud-bank, has nearly reached the usual surface
elevation, the first vegetable life it exhibits is that of samphire,
then of a very thin wiry grass, and after this some other varieties of
marine grass; and when the surface is thus covered with vegetation, the
land may at once be embanked; but if it is enclosed from the tide before
it obtains a green carpet, it may be for twenty years of but little
value to agriculture, for scarcely anything will grow upon it."
This is not the only place on the eastern coast where we may see
artificial land, and banks, dikes, and other defences against the water
such as are commonly supposed to be peculiar to the Netherlands.
The windows of Cleathorpes twinkling afar in the morning sun, reveal the
situation of a watering-place on the opposite shore much frequented by
Lincolnshire folk. Beyond rises the tall and graceful tower of Grimsby
Docks, serving at once as signal tower and reservoir of the water-power
by which the cranes and other apparatus are worked, and ships laden and
unladen with marvellous celerity. These docks cover a hundred acres of
what a few years ago was a great mud-flat, and are a favourable specimen
of what can be accomplished by the overhasty enterprise of the present
day. Grimsby on her side of the river now rivals Hull on the other, with
the advantage of being nearer the sea, whereby some miles of navigation
are avoided.
Turning to the right again we pass Foul Holme Sand, a long narrow spit,
covered at half-tide, which some day may become reclaimable. A little
farther and there is the church of Paghill or Paul, standing on a low
hill so completely isolated from the broken village to which it belongs,
that the distich runs:
"High Paul, and Low Paul, Paul, and Paul Holme,
There was never a fair maid married in Paul town."
The vessel urges her way onwards across swirls and eddies innumerable
which betray the presence of shoals and the vigorous strife of opposing
currents. The spring tides rise twenty-two feet, and rush in with a
stream at five miles an hour, noisy and at times dangerous, churning the
mud and shifting it from one place to another, to the provocation of
pilots. It is mostly above Hull that the changes take place, and there
they are so sudden and rapid that a pilot may find the channel by which
he had descended shifted to another part of the river on his return a
few days afterwards. There also islands appear and disappear in a manner
truly surprising, and in the alternate loss or gain of the shores may be
witnessed the most capricious of phenomena. Let one example suffice: a
field of fourteen acres, above Ferriby, was reduced to less than four
acres in twenty years, although the farmer during that time had
constructed seven new banks for the defence of his land.
Some notion of the enormous quantity of mud which enters the great river
may be formed from the fact that fifty thousand tons of mud have been
dredged in one year from the docks and basins at Hull. The steam-dredge
employed in the work lifts fifty tons of mud in an hour, pours it into
lighters, which when laden drop down with the tide, and discharge their
slimy burden in certain parts of the stream, where, as is said, it
cannot accumulate.
Stukely, who crossed the estuary during one of his itineraries, remarks:
"Well may the Humber take its name from the noise it makes. My landlord,
who is a sailor, says in a high wind 'tis incredibly great and terrible,
like the crash and dashing together of ships." The learned antiquary
alludes probably to the bore, or ager as it is called, which rushes up
the stream with so loud a _hum_ that the popular mind seeks no other
derivation for Humber. Professor Phillips, in his admirable book on
Yorkshire, cites the Gaelic word _Comar_, a confluence of two or more
waters, as the origin; and Dr. Latham suggests that Humber may be the
modified form of Aber or Inver. Drayton, in _Polyolbion_, chants of a
tragical derivation; and as I take it for granted, amicable reader, that
you do not wish to travel in a hurry, we will pause for a few minutes to
listen to the debate of the rivers, wherein "thus mighty Humber speaks:"
"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 Swale
That dancing come to Ouse, thro' many a dainty dale,
Do greatly me enrich, clear Derwent driving down
From 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 maintain
Which either of themselves, or in their greater's train
Their 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 king
Once 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 I
Am 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 take
The neighbouring people deaf; nor Ganges so much praise,
That where he narrowest is, eight miles in broadness lays
His bosom; nor so much hereafter shall be spoke
Of that (but lately found) Guianian Oronoque,
Whose cataract a noise so horrible doth keep
That 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 shore
Even 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 L200,000, 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 besides
To 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
10,000_l._ 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 baroniae_, 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 Praetorium 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.
Suddenly a gap occurs in the bank, showing where the unruly tide has
broken through. For some reason the mischief was not repaired, but a new
bank was constructed of chalk and big pebbles, about a stone's throw to
the rear. A green, slimy pool still lies in a hollow between the two.
The entertainment at the _Crown and Anchor_ at Kilnsea by no means
equals the expectations of a stranger who reads the host's aristocratic
name--_Metforth Tennison_--over the door. I found the bread poor; the
cheese poorer; the beer poorest; yet was content therewith, knowing that
vicissitude is good for a man. The place itself has a special interest,
telling, so to speak, its own history--a history of desolation. The
wife, pointing to the road passing between the house and the beach, told
me she remembered Kilnsea church standing at the seaward end of the
village, with as broad a road between it and the edge of the cliff. But
year by year, as from time immemorial the sea advanced, the road,
fields, pastures, and cottages were undermined and melted away. Still
the church stood, and though it trembled as the roaring waves smote the
cliff beneath, and the wind howled around its unsheltered walls, service
was held within it up to 1823. In that year it began to yield, the walls
cracked, the floor sank, the windows broke; sea-birds flew in and out,
shrieking in the storm, until, in 1826, one-half of the edifice tumbled
into the sea, and the other half followed in 1831. The chief portion of
the village stands on and near the cliff, but as the waste appears to be
greater there than elsewhere, houses are abandoned year by year. In
1847, the _Blue Bell Inn_ was five hundred and thirty-four yards from
the shore; of this quantity forty-three yards were lost in the next six
years. Kilnsea exists, therefore, only as a diminished and diminishing
parish, and in the few scattered cottages near the bank of the Humber.
The old font was carried away from the church to Skeffling, where it is
preserved in the garden of the parsonage.
Her reminiscences ended, the good woman talked of the rough walking that
lay before me. It was a wild place out there, not often visited by
strangers; but sometimes "wagon loads o' coontra foak cam' to see t'
loights." At one time, as I have heard, a stage-coach used to do the
journey for the gratification of the curious.
A short distance beyond the _Crown and Anchor_ stands a small lone
cottage built of sea-cobbles, with a sandy garden and potato-plot in
front, and a sandy field, in which a thin, stunted crop of rye was
making believe to grow. Once past this cottage, and all is a wild waste
of sand, covered here and there with reedy grass, among which you now
and then see a dusty pink convolvulus, struggling, as it were, to keep
alive a speck of beauty amid the barrenness. Here, as old chronicles
tell, the king once had 'coningers,' or rabbit-warrens, and rabbits
still burrow in the hillocks. Presently, there is the wide open sea on
your left, and you can mark the waves rushing up on either side, hissing
and thundering against the low bank that keeps them apart.
"A broad long sand in the shape of a spoon," is the description given of
Spurn in a petition presented to parliament nearly two hundred years
ago; and, if we suppose the spoon turned upside down, it still answers.
It narrows and sinks as it projects from the main shore for about two
miles, and this part being the weakest and most easily shifted by the
rapid currents, is strengthened every few yards by rows of stakes
driven deeply in, and hurdle work. You see the effect in the smooth
drifts accumulated in the space between the barriers, which only require
to be planted with grass to become fixed. As it is, the walking is
laborious: you sink ankle-deep and slide back at every step, unless you
accept the alternative of walking within the wash of the advancing wave.
For a long while the lighthouse appears to be as far off as ever.
A little farther, and we are on a rugged embankment of chalk: the ground
is low on each side, and a large pond rests in the hollow between us and
the sea on the left, marking the spot where, a few years ago, the sea
broke through and made a clean sweep all across the bank. Every tide
washed it wider and deeper, until at last the fishing-vessels used it as
a short cut in entering or departing from the river. The effect of the
breach would, in time, had a low-water channel been established, have
seriously endangered the shore of the estuary, besides threatening
destruction to the site of the lighthouse. As speedily, therefore, as
wind and weather would permit, piles and stakes were driven in, and the
gap was filled up with big lumps of chalk brought from the quarry at
Barton, forming an embankment sloped on both sides, to render the shock
of the waves as harmless as possible. The trucks, rails, and sleepers
with which the work had been accomplished were still lying on the sand,
awaiting removal. Henceforth measures of precaution will be taken in
time, for a conservator of the river has been appointed.
The depth of the bay formed by the spoon appears to increase more and
more each time you look back. How vast is the curve between this bank of
chalk and the point where we struck the shore from Skeffling! The
far-spreading sands--or rather mud--are known as the Trinity Dry Sands.
At this moment they are disappearing beneath the rising tide, and you
can easily see what thousands of acres might be reclaimed were a barrier
erected to keep out the water. "Government have been talkin' o' doing it
for years," said a fisherman to whom I talked at Kilnsea, "but 'taint
begun yet."
Desolate as is now the scene, it was once enlivened by the dwellings of
men and the stir of commerce. Off the spot where we stand, there lay,
five hundred years ago, a low islet, accessible by a flat ridge of sand
and yellow pebbles, known as Ravenser Odd, or Ravensrode, as some write
it. "Situate at the entry to the sea," it was a port regarded with envy
and fear by the merchants of Grimsby and Hull, for its pilots were
skilful, and its traders enterprising. For a time it flourished; but
while the rival Roses wasted the realm, the sea crept nearer, and at
length, after an existence of a century and a half, distinctly traceable
in ancient records and old books, a high tide, enraged by a storm, ended
the history of Ravenser Odd with a fearful catastrophe. A gravelly bank,
running outwards, still discoverable by excavation, is believed to be
the foundation of the low, flat ridge of sand and yellow pebbles along
which the folk of the little town passed daily to and fro; among them at
times strange seamen and merchants from far-away lands, and cowled monks
and friars pacing meekly on errands of the Church.
And yonder, near the bottom of the curve, stood the town variously
described as Ravenser, Ravenspurne, and Ravenspurg--a town that sent
members to parliament in the reigns of the first two Edwards, and was
considered of sufficient importance to be invited to take part in the
great councils held in London, when the "kinge's majestie" desired to
know the naval forces of the kingdom. Now, twice a day, the tide rolls
in triumphantly over its site.
"The banish'd Bolingbroke repeals himself,
And with uplifted arms is safe arriv'd
At Ravenspurg,"
writes Shakspeare, perpetuating alike the name of the place and the
memory of the Duke of Lancaster's adventure,--an adventure brought
before us in an invective by the fiery Hotspur, which I may, perhaps, be
pardoned for introducing here:
"My father, my uncle, and myself,
Did give him that same royalty he wears:
And,--when he was not six and twenty strong,
Sick in the world's regard, wretched and low,
A poor unminded outlaw, sneaking home,--
My father gave him welcome to the shore:
And,--when he heard him swear a vow to God,
He came but to be Duke of Lancaster,
To sue his livery, and beg his peace;
With tears of innocency and terms of zeal,--
My father, in kind heart and pity mov'd,
Swore him assistance, and performed it too.
Now, when the lords and barons of the realm
Perceived Northumberland did lean to him,
The more and less came in with cap and knee;
Met him in boroughs, cities, villages;
Attended him on bridges, stood in lanes,
Laid gifts before him, proffered him their oaths,
Gave him their heirs; as pages follow'd him,
Even at the heels, in golden multitudes.
He presently,--as greatness knows itself,--
Steps me a little higher than his vow
Made to my father, while his blood was poor,
Upon the naked shore at Ravenspurg."
The cross set up to commemorate the landing was shifted from place to
place when endangered by the sea, and lastly to Hedon, where it still
remains, as already mentioned. It was at the same port that Edward IV.
landed, with an excuse plausible as that of the duke whose exploit he
imitated.
Though it be "naked" still, and toilsome to walk on, the shore is by no
means barren of interest. By-and-by we come to firm ground, mostly
covered with thickly-matted grass; a great irregular, oval mound, which
represents the bowl of the spoon reversed. Near its centre is a fenced
garden and a row of cottages--the residence of the life-boat crew. A
little farther, on the summit of the ridge, stands the lighthouse, built
by Smeaton, in 1776, and at the water's edge, on the inner side, the
lower light. The principal tower is ninety feet in height, and from the
gallery at the top you get an excellent bird's-eye view over sea and
land. Most remarkable is the tongue of sand along which we have walked,
now visible in its whole extent and outline. It is lowest where the
breach was made, and now that the tide has risen higher, the chalk
embankment seems scarcely above the level of the water. Beyond that it
broadens away to the shore of the estuary on one side, and the coast of
Holderness on the other--low, sweeping lines which your eye follows for
miles. By the waste of that coast the Spurn is maintained, and the
Trinity Sands are daily enlarged, and the meadows fattened along Ouse
and Trent. First the lighter particles of the falling cliffs drift round
by the set of the current, and gradually the heavier portions and
pebbles follow, and the supply being inexhaustible, a phenomenon is
produced similar to that of the Chesil Bank, on the coast of
Dorsetshire, except that here the pebbles are for the most part masked
by sand.
I looked northwards for Flamborough Head, but Dimlington Hill, which
lies between, though not half the height, hides it completely. Beyond
Dimlington lies Withernsea, a small watering-place, the terminus of the
Hull and Holderness Railway, to which the natives of the melancholy town
betake themselves for health and recreation, tempted by a quadrille band
and cheap season-tickets. Adjoining Withernsea is all that remains of
Owthorne, a village which has shared the doom of Kilnsea. The churches
at the two places were known as 'sister churches;' that at Withernsea
yet stands in ruins; but Owthorne church was swept into the sea within
the memory of persons now living. The story runs that two sisters living
there, each on her manor, in the good old times, began to build a church
for the glory of God and the good of their own souls, and the work went
on prosperously until a quarrel arose between them on the question of
spire or tower. Neither would yield. At length a holy monk suggested
that each sister should build a church on her own manor; the suggestion
was approved, and for long years the Sister Churches resounded with the
voice of prayer and praise, and offered a fair day-mark to the mariner.
But, as of old, the devouring sea rushed higher and higher upon the
land, and the cliff, sapped and undermined, fell, and with it the church
of Owthorne. In 1786, the edge of the burial-ground first began to fail;
the church itself was not touched till thirty years later. It was a
mournful sight to see the riven churchyard, and skeletons and broken
coffins sticking out from the new cliff, and bones, skulls, and
fragments of long-buried wood strewn on the beach. One of the coffins
washed out from a vault under the east end of the church contained an
embalmed corpse, the back of the scalp still bearing the gray hairs of
one who had been the village pastor. The eyes of the villagers were
shocked by these ghastly relics of mortality tossed rudely forth to the
light of day; and aged folk who tottered down to see the havoc, wept as
by some remembered token they recognised a relative or friend of bygone
years, whom they had followed to the grave--the resting place of the
dead, as they trusted, till the end of time. In some places bodies still
clad in naval attire, with bright-coloured silk kerchiefs round the
neck, were unearthed, as if the sea were eager to reclaim the
shipwrecked sailors whom it had in former time flung dead upon the
shore.
But, to return to the lighthouse. According to Smeaton's survey this
extremity of the spoon comprehends ninety-eight acres. It slopes gently
to the sea, and is somewhat altered in outline by every gale. At the
time of my visit, rows of piles were being driven in, and barriers of
chalk erected, to secure the ground on the outer side between the tower
and the sea; and a new row of cottages for the life-boat crew, built
nearer to the side where most wrecks occur than the old row, was nearly
finished. Beyond, towards the point, stands a public-house, in what
seems a dangerous situation, close to the water. There was once a garden
between it and the sea; now the spray dashes into the rear of the house;
for the wall and one-half of the hindermost room have disappeared along
with the garden, and the hostess contents herself with the rooms in
front, fondly hoping they will last her time. She has but few guests
now, and talks with regret of the change since the digging of ballast
was forbidden on the Spurn. Then trade was good, for the diggers were
numerous and thirsty. That ballast-digging should ever have been
permitted in so unstable a spot argues a great want of forethought
somewhere.
The paved enclosure around the tower is kept scrupulously clean, for the
rain which falls thereon and flows into the cistern beneath is the only
drinkable water to be had. "It never fails," said the keeper, "but in
some seasons acquires a stale flavour." He was formerly at Flamborough,
and although appointment to the Spurn was promotion, he did not like it
so well. It was so lonesome; the rough, trackless way between, made the
nearest village seem far off; now and then a boat came across with
visitors from Cleathorpes, a seven miles' trip; there had been one that
morning, but not often enough to break the monotony. And he could not
get much diversion in reading, for the Trinity Board, he knew not why,
had ceased to circulate the lighthouse library.
The lesser tower stands at the foot of the inner slope, where its base
is covered by every tide. Its height is fifty feet, and the entrance,
approached by a long wooden bridge, is far above reach of the water.
This is the third tower erected on the same spot; the two which preceded
it suffered so much damage from the sea that they had to be rebuilt.
About the time that ambitious Bolingbroke landed, a good hermit, moved
with pity by the number of wrecks, and the dangers that beset the mouth
of the estuary, set up a light somewhere near Ravenser. But finding
himself too poor to maintain it, he addressed a petition to the "wyse
Commons of Parliament," for succour, and not in vain. The mayor of Hull,
with other citizens, were empowered "to make a toure to be up on
daylight and a redy bekyn wheryn shall be light gevyng by nyght to alle
the vesselx that comyn into the seid ryver of Humbre."
In the seventeenth century, Mr. Justinian Angell, of London, obtained a
license to build a lighthouse on the Spurn. It was an octagonal tower of
brick, displaying an open coal fire on the top, which in stormy weather
was frequently blown quite out, when most wanted. Wrecks were
continually taking place; and it is only since Smeaton completed his
tower, and the floating-light was established in the offing, and the
channel was properly buoyed, that vessels can approach the Humber with
safety by night as well as by day.
It was full tide when I returned along the chalky embankment, and the
light spray from the breakers sprinkled my cheek, giving me a playful
intimation of what might be expected in a storm.
I was passing a tilery near Welwick, when a beery fellow, who sat in the
little office with a jug before him and a pipe in his mouth, threw up
the window and asked, in a gruff, insolent tone, "A say, guvner, did ye
meet Father Mathew?"
"Yes."
"What did he say to ye?"
"He told me I should see a fool at the tileworks."
Down went the window with a hearty slam, and before I was fifty yards
away, the same voice rushed into the road and challenged me to go back
and fight. And when the owner of the voice saw that the stranger took no
heed thereof, he cried, till hidden by a bend in the road, "Yer nothin'
but t' scram o' t' yerth!--yer nothin' but t' scram o' t' yerth!"
Thinking _scram_ might be the Yorkshire for _scum_, I made a note of it
for the benefit of philologists, and kept on to Patrington, where I
arrived in time for the last train to Hull, quite content with
six-and-twenty miles for my first day's walk.
CHAPTER IV.
Northern Manners--Cottingham--The Romance of Baynard Castle--
Beverley--Yorkshire Dialect--The Farmers' Breakfast--Glimpses
of the Town--Antiquities and Constables--The Minster--Yellow
Ochre--The Percy Shrine--The Murdered Earl--The Costly Funeral
--The Sister's Tomb--Rhyming Legend--The Fridstool--The Belfry.
Journeying from Hull to Beverley by 'market-train' on the morrow, I had
ample proof, in the noisy talk of the crowded passengers, that Yorkshire
dialect and its peculiar idioms are not "rapidly disappearing before the
facilities for travel afforded by railways." Nor could I fail to notice
what has before struck me, that taken class for class, the people north
of Coventry exhibit a rudeness, not to say coarseness of manners, which
is rarely seen south of that ancient city. In Staffordshire, within
twenty miles of Birmingham, there are districts where baptism, marriage,
and other moral and religious observances considered as essentials of
Christianity, are as completely disregarded as among the heathen. In
some parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire similar characteristics prevail;
but rude manners do not necessarily imply loose morality. Generally
speaking the rudeness is a safety-valve that lets off the faults or
seeming faults of character; and I for one prefer rudeness to that
over-refinement prevalent in Middlesex, where you may not call things by
their right names, and where, as a consequence, the sense of what is
fraudulent, and criminal, and wicked, has become weakened, because of
the very mild and innocent words in which 'good society' requires that
dishonesty and sin should be spoken of.
If we alight at Cottingham and take a walk in the neighbourhood we may
discover the scene of a romantic incident. There stood Baynard Castle, a
grand old feudal structure, the residence of Lord Wake. When Henry VIII.
lay at Hull, he sent a messenger to announce a royal visit to the
castle, anticipating, no doubt, a loyal reception; but the lord instead
of pride felt only alarm, for his wife, whom he loved truly, was very
beautiful, and he feared for the consequences should the amorous monarch
set eyes on her beauty. He resolved on a stratagem: gave instructions to
his confidential steward; departed at dead of night with his wife; and
before morning nothing of the castle remained but a heap of smoking
ruins. The king, on hearing of the fire, little suspecting the cause,
generously sent a gift of two thousand pounds, with friendly words, to
mitigate the loss; but the wary lord having evaded the visit, refused
also to receive the money. And now, after lapse of centuries, there is
nothing left but traces of a moat and rampart, to show the wayfarer
where such an ardent sacrifice was made to true affection.
Even among the farmers, at whose table I took breakfast at the
_Holderness Hotel_, at Beverley, there was evidence that broad Yorkshire
is not bad Dutch, as the proverb says:
"Gooid brade, botter, and cheese,
Is gooid Yorkshire, and gooid Friese."
The farmers talked about horses, and, to my surprise, they ate but
daintily of the good things, the beef, ham, mutton, brawn, and other
substantial fare that literally burdened the table. Not one played the
part of a good trencherman, but trifled as if the victim of dinners
fashionably late; and still more to my surprise, when the conversation
took a turn, they all spoke disdainfully of walking. That sort of
exercise was not at all to their liking. "I ha'n't walked four mile I
don't know when," said one; and his fellows avowed themselves similarly
lazy. My intention to walk along the coast to the mouth of the Tees
appeared to them a weakminded project.
Beverley has a staid, respectable aspect, as if aware of its claims to
consideration. Many of the houses have an old-world look, and among them
a searching eye will discover unmistakable bits of antiquity. A small
columnar building in the market-place is called the market-cross; beyond
it stands a rare old specimen of architecture, St. Mary's church, the
scene of the accident recorded by the ancient rhymer:--
"At Beverley a sudden chaunce did falle,
The parish chirche stepille it fell
At evynsonge tyme, the chaunce was thralle,
Ffourscore folke ther was slayn thay telle."
Beyond the church, one of the old town gates, a heavy stone arch,
bestrides the street. At the other end of the town, screened by an
ancient brick wall, you may see the house of the Black Friars--more
venerable than picturesque--besides little glimpses of the middle ages
on your straggling saunter thither. Among these are not a few of that
sort of endowments which give occasion for abuses, and perpetuate
helplessness. And of noticeable peculiarities you will perhaps think
that one might be beneficially imitated in other towns. A CONSTABLE
LIVES HERE is a notification which you may read on sundry little boards,
topped by a royal crown, nailed here and there over the doors.
But the minster is the great attraction, rich in historical associations
and architectural beauty. The edifice, as it now appears, has all been
built since the destruction by fire, in 1138, of an older church that
stood on the same spot. The style is diverse, a not uncommon
characteristic of ancient churches: Early English at the east end,
Decorated in the nave, and Perpendicular in the west front and some
minor portions. This western front is considered the master-work, for
not one of its features is out of harmony with the others--a specimen of
the Perpendicular, so Rickman signifies, not less admirable than the
west front of York Minster of the Decorated. The effect, indeed, is
singularly striking as you approach it from a quiet back street. I found
a seat in a favourable point of view, and sat till my eye was satisfied
with the sight of graceful forms, multiplied carvings, the tracery and
ornament from base to roof, and upwards, where the towers, two hundred
feet in height, rise grandly against the bright blue sky.
However much you may admire yellow ochre on door-steps, door-posts, and
in the passages and on the stairs of dwelling-houses, you will think it
out of place when used to hide the natural colour of the masonry in a
noble church. For me, the effect of the interior was marred by the
yellow mask of the great pillars. The eye expects repose and harmony,
and finds itself cheated. Apart from this, the lofty proportions, the
perspective of the aisles, the soaring arches, the streaming lights and
tinted shadows, fail not in their power to charm. Your architect is a
mighty magician. All the windows, as is believed, were once filled with
stained glass, for the large east window was glazed in 1733 with the
numerous fragments that remained after the destroyers of ecclesiastical
art had perpetrated their mischief. The colours show the true old tone;
and the effect, after all, is not unpleasing.
The Percy shrine on the north side of the choir is one of the monuments
to which, after viewing the carved stalls and the altar screen, the
sexton will call your special attention. It is a canopied tomb of
exquisite workmanship, enriched with various carvings, figures of
knights and angels, crockets and finials; marking the resting-place, as
is supposed, of the Lady Idonea Clifford, wife of the second Lord Percy
of Alnwick. The Percys played a conspicuous part in Yorkshire history.
Another of the family, grandson of Hotspur, reposes, as is said, under a
tomb in the north transept. He was not a warrior, but a prebend of
Beverley. Then, at the east end, the Percy chapel, which has lost its
beauty through mutilation, commemorates Henry, the fourth Earl of
Northumberland, who was massacred at his seat, Maiden Bower, near
Topcliffe, in 1489. Authorized by Henry VII. to answer the appeal of the
leading men of his neighbourhood against a tax which levied one-tenth of
their property, by a declaration that not one penny would be abated, he
delivered his message in terms so haughty and imperious, that the chiefs
losing patience, brought up their retainers, sacked the house and
murdered the earl. The corpse was buried here in the minster; and the
funeral, which cost a sum equivalent to 10,000_l._ present value, is
described as of surpassing magnificence. Among the numerous items set
down in the bill of charges is twopence a piece for fourteen thousand
"pore folk" at the burial.
In the south aisle of the nave stands another canopied tomb, an altar
tomb of elegant form, covered by a slab of Purbeck marble, which appears
never to have had a word of inscription to tell in whose memory it was
erected. Neither trace nor record: nothing but tradition, and Venerable
Bede. St. John of Beverley had only to send a cruse of water into which
he had dipped his finger to a sick person to effect a cure. He once
restored the wife of Earl Puch, who lived at Bishop Burton, a few miles
distant. The lady drank a draught of holy water, and recovered forthwith
from a grievous sickness. She had two daughters who, overawed by the
miracle, entered the nunnery at Beverley, where they won a reputation
for holiness and good works. It was they who gave the two pastures on
which freemen of the town still graze their cattle. The rest of their
story is told in the ballad: it was Christmas-eve, says the rhymer, the
customary service had been performed in the chapel; the abbess and her
nuns slowly retired to pursue their devotions apart in their cells, all
save two, who lingered and went forth hand in hand after the others.
Whither went they? On the morrow they were missing; and
"The snow did melt, the Winter fled
Before the gladsome Spring,
And flowers did bud, the cuckoo piped,
And merry birds did sing:
"And Spring danced by, and crowned with boughs
Came lusty Summer on:
And the bells ring out, for 'tis the eve,
The eve of blessed St. John.
"But where bide they, the sisters twain?
Have the holy sisters fled?
And the abbess and all her nuns bewail'd
The sisters twain for dead.
"Then walk they forth in the eventide,
In the cool and dusky hour;
And the abbess goes up the stair of stone
High on the belfry tower,
"Now Christ thee save! thou sweet ladye,
For on the roof-tree there,
Like as in blessed trance y-rapt,
She sees the sisters fair.
"Whence come ye, daughters? long astray:
'Tis but an hour, they tell,
Since we did chant the vesper hymn,
And list the vesper bell.
"Nay, daughters, nay! 'tis months agone:
Sweet mother, an hour we ween;
But we have been in heaven each one,
And holy angels seen."
A miracle! cries the rhymer; and he goes on to tell how that the nuns
repair to the chapel and chant a hymn of praise, after which the two
sisters, kneeling, entreat the abbess for her blessing, and no sooner
has she pronounced _Vade in pace_, than drooping like two fair lilies,
two pale corpses sink to the floor. Then the bells break into a chime
wondrously sweet, rung by no earthly hand; and when the sisters are
laid in the tomb, they suffer no decay. Years passed away, and still no
change touched those lovely forms and angelic features:
"And pilgrims came from all the land,
And eke from oversea,
To pray at the shrine of the sisters twain,
And St. John of Beverley."
Another noteworthy object is King Athelstan's _Fridstool_, or chair of
peace; the centre of a sanctuary which extended a mile from the minster
in all directions. Any fugitive who could once sit therein was safe,
whatever his crime. When Richard II. encamped at Beverley, on his way to
Scotland, his half-brother, Sir John Holland, having aided in the
atrocious murder of Lord Ralph Stafford, fled to the _Fridstool_, nor
would he leave it until assured of the king's pardon. "The Countess of
Warwick is now out of Beverley sanctuary," says Sir John Paston, writing
to his brother in June, 1473--the days of Edward IV. The chair, hewn
from a single block of stone, is very primitive in form and appearance;
and as devoid of beauty as some of the seats in the Soulages collection.
Athelstan was a great benefactor to the church. You may see his effigy,
and that of St. John, at the entrance to the choir and over a door in
the south transept, where he is represented as handing a charter to the
holy man, of which one of the privileges is recorded in old English
characters:
#Als Fre make I The
As hert may thynke or Egh may see.#
Such a generous giver deserved to be held in honour, especially if the
eye were to see from the height of the tower, to the top of which I now
mounted by the narrow winding-stair. While stopping to take breath in
the belfry, you will perhaps be amused by a table of ringer's laws, and
a record of marvellous peals, the same in purport as those exhibited at
Hull. You can take your time in the ascent, for sextons eschew climbing,
at least in all the churches I visited in Yorkshire.
CHAPTER V.
A Scotchman's Observations--The Prospect--The Anatomy of
Beverley--Historical Associations--The Brigantes--The Druids--
Austin's Stone--The Saxons--Coifi and Paulinus--Down with
Paganism--A Great Baptism--St. John of Beverley--Athelstan and
Brunanburgh--The Sanctuary--The Conqueror--Archbishop
Thurstan's Privileges--The Sacrilegious Mayor--Battle of the
Standard--St. John's Miracles--Brigand Burgesses--Annual
Football--Surrounding Sites--Watton and Meaux--Etymologies--
King Athelstan's Charter.
"On my first coming to England I landed at Hull, whose scenery
enraptured me. The extended flatness of surface--the tall trees loaded
with foliage--the large fat cattle wading to the knees in rich
pasture--all had the appearance of fairy-land fertility. I hastened to
the top of the first steeple--thence to the summit of Beverley Minster,
and wondered over the plain of verdure and rank luxury, without a heathy
hill or barren rock, which lay before me. When, after being duly sated
into dulness by the constant sight of this miserably flat country, I saw
my old bare mountains again, my ravished mind struggled as if it would
break through the prison of the body, and soar with the eagle to the
summit of the Grampians. The Pentland, Lomond, and Ochil hills seemed to
have grown to an amazing size in my absence, and I remarked several
peculiarities about them which I had never observed before."
This passage occurs in the writings of the late James Gilchrist, an
author to whom I am indebted for some part of my mental culture. I quote
it as an example of the different mood of mind in which the view from
the top of the tower may be regarded. To one fresh from a town it is
delightful. As you step on the leads and gaze around on what was once
called "the Lowths," you are surprised by the apparently boundless
expanse--a great champaign of verdure, far as eye can reach, except
where, in the north-west, the wolds begin to upheave their purple
undulations. The distance is forest-like: nearer the woods stand out as
groves, belts, and clumps, with park-like openings between, and
everywhere fields and hedgerows innumerable. How your eye feasts on the
uninterrupted greenness, and follows the gleaming lines of road running
off in all directions, and comes back at last to survey the town at the
foot of the tower!
Few towns will bear inspection from above so well as Beverley. It is
well built, and is as clean in the rear of the houses as in the streets.
Looking from such a height, the yards and gardens appear diminished, and
the trim flower-beds, and leafy arbours, and pebbled paths, and angular
plots, and a prevailing neatness reveal much in favour of the domestic
virtues of the inhabitants. And the effect is heightened by the green
spaces among the bright red roofs, and woods which straggle in patches
into the town, whereby it retains somewhat of the sylvan aspect for
which it was in former times especially remarkable.
Apart from its natural features, the region is rich in associations. The
history of Beverley, an epitome of that of the whole county, tempts one
to linger, if but for half an hour. It will not be time thrown away, for
a glimpse of the past may beneficially influence our further wanderings.
Here the territory of the Brigantes, which even the Romans did not
conquer till more than a hundred years after their landing in Kent,
stretched across the island from sea to sea. Here, deep in the great
forest, the Druids had one of their sacred groves, a temple of living
oaks, for their mysterious worship and ruthless sacrifices. Hundreds of
tumuli scattered over the country, entombing kysts, coffins, fragments
of skeletons, and rude pottery, and not less the names of streets and
places, supply interesting testimony of their existence. Drewton, a
neighbouring village, marks, as is said, the site of Druid's-town, where
a stone about twelve feet in height yet standing was so much venerated
by the natives, that Augustine stood upon it to preach, and erected a
cross thereupon that the worshipper might learn to associate it with a
purer faith. It is still known as Austin's Stone.
The Saxon followed, and finding the territory hollow between the cliffs
of the coast and the wolds, named it Hoell-deira-ness, whence the present
Holderness. It was in the forest of Deira that the conference was held
in presence of Edwin and Ethelburga, between the missionary Paulinus and
Coifi, the high-priest of Odin, on the contending claims of Christianity
and Paganism. The right prevailed; and Coifi, convinced by the arguments
he had heard, seized a spear, and hurrying on horseback to the temple at
Godmanham, cursed his deity, and hurled the spear at the image with such
fury that it remained quivering in the wall of the sacred edifice. The
multitude looked on in amazement, waiting for some sign of high
displeasure at so outrageous a desecration. But no sign was given, and
veering suddenly from dread to derision, they tore down the temple, and
destroyed the sacred emblems. Edwin's timorous convictions were
strengthened by the result, and so great was the throng of converts to
the new faith, that, as is recorded, Paulinus baptized more than ten
thousand in one day in the Swale. According to tradition, the present
church at Godmanham, nine miles distant, a very ancient edifice, was
built from the ruins of the Pagan temple.
St. John of Beverley was born at Harpham, a village near
Driffield--Deirafeld--in 640. Diligent in his calling, and eminently
learned and conscientious, he became Archbishop of York. In 700 he
founded here an establishment of monks, canons, and nuns, and rebuilt or
beautified the church, which had been erected in the second century; and
when, after thirty-three years of godly rule over his diocese, he laid
aside the burden of authority, it was to the peaceful cloisters of
Beverley that he retired. "He was educated," says Fuller, "under
Theodorus the Grecian, and Archbishop of Canterbury, yet was he not so
famous for his teacher as for his scholar, Venerable Bede, who wrote
this John's life, which he hath so spiced with miracles, that it is of
the hottest for a discreet man to digest into his belief." He died in
721, and was buried in his favourite church, with a reputation for
sanctity which eventually secured him a place in the calendar.
Was it not to St. John of Beverley that Athelstan owed the victory at
Brunanburgh, which made him sole monarch of Northumbria? The fame of the
"great battle" remains, while all knowledge of the site of Brunanburgh
has utterly perished, unless, as is argued in the Proceedings of the
Literary and Historical Society of Liverpool, it was fought near
Burnley, in Lancashire. It was celebrated alike in Anglo-Saxon song and
history. Greater carnage of people slain by the edge of the sword, says
the ancient chronicle, had never been seen in this island, since Angles
and Saxons, mighty war-smiths, crossed the broad seas to Britain.
Athelstan, in fulfilment of his vow, laid up his sword at the shrine of
St. John, and added largely to the revenues and privileges of the
church. A stone cross, erected on each of the four roads, a mile from
the minster, marked the limits of the sanctuary which he conferred. One
of these yet remains, but in a sadly mutilated condition.
When the Conqueror came and laid the country waste from Humber to Tees,
trampling it into a "horrible wilderness," he spared Beverley and the
surrounding lands, yielding, as was believed, to the miraculous
influence of the patron saint. One of his soldiers, who entered the town
with hostile intent, became suddenly paralysed, and smitten with
incurable disease; and a captain falling, by accident, as it seemed,
from his horse, his head was turned completely round by the shock. These
were warnings not to be disregarded; and Beverley remained a scene of
fertile beauty amid the desolation.
One of John's successors, Archbishop Thurstan, took pleasure also in
fondling Beverley. He cut the canal, a mile in length, from the river
Hull to the town: he gave to the inhabitants a charter of incorporation
conferring similar privileges to those enjoyed by the citizens of York,
whereby they were free from all fines and dues in England and Normandy;
had the right to pontage--that is, a toll on all the barges and boats
that passed under a bridge, as well as on the vehicles over it; and to
worry debtors as rigorously as they chose, without fear of retaliation.
In these anti-church-rate days it is surprising enough to read of the
power exercised by an archbishop in the twelfth century. Thurstan had
rule over the baronies of Beverley and five other places, with power to
try and execute criminals, and punish thieves without appeal. In all the
baronies the prisons were his; to him belonged the gibbet, pillory, and
cucking-stool in the towns; the assize of bread and beer; waifs and
wrecks of the sea; the right to 'prises' in the river Hull, diligently
enforced by his watchful coroners; besides park and free warren, and all
his land released from suit and service.
That taking of prises, by the way, was a standing cause of quarrel
between the burghers of Hull and Beverley. The right to seize two casks
of wine from every vessel of more than twenty tons burthen that entered
the river, one before, the other behind the mast, was a grievance too
much akin to robbery to be borne with patience. The merchants, wise in
their generation, tried to save their casks by discharging the cargoes
into smaller vessels before entering the port; but the coroners detected
the evasion, and took their prises all the same. Hence bitter quarrels;
in which the Beverley ships, dropping down the stream to pursue their
voyage, were many times barred out of the Humber by the men of Hull.
Once, when the archbishop appeared at the port to defend his right, the
mayor, losing temper, snatched the crosier from the dignitary's hand,
and, using it as a weapon, actually spilt blood with the sacred
instrument.
Never was the saint's influence more triumphantly felt than when
Thurstan's fiery eloquence roused the citizens of York to march against
David of Scotland. The Scottish king, to support Maud's claim against
Stephen, ravaged Northumbria with such ferocious devastation, that it
seemed but a repetition of the Norman havoc, and provoked the Saxon part
of the population to join in repelling the invader. After threatening
York, David moved northwards, followed by the Yorkshire army, which had
rendezvoused at the castle of Thirsk. To inspire their patriotism, a
great pole, topped by a crucifix, and hung with the standards of St.
John of Beverley, St. Peter of York, and St. Wilfred of Ripon, was
mounted on wheels, and placed where every eye could behold it. The
Scottish army was overtaken three miles beyond Northallerton, on the
22nd of August, 1138. The king, seeing the threefold standard from afar,
inquires of a deserter what it means; whereupon he replies, in the words
of the ballad:
"A mast of a ship it is so high,
All bedeck'd with gold so gay;
And on its top is a Holy Cross,
That shines as bright as day.
"Around it hang the holy banners
Of many a blessed saint:
St Peter, and John of Beverley,
And St. Wilfrid there they paint."
The king begins to have misgivings, and rejoins:
"Oh! had I but yon Holy Rood
That there so bright doth show,
I would not care for yon English host,
Nor the worst that they could do."
But in vain: the Yorkshire blood was up, no quarter was given, and ten
thousand Scotchmen bit the dust. So complete was the victory, that the
oppressed Saxons boasted of it as an indemnity for their former
sufferings; and the Battle of the Standard remains memorable among the
greatest battles of Yorkshire, and the Standard Hill among her
historical places.
Was it not the same St. John who afterwards appeared in full pontificals
to Stephen, and warned him to stay his purpose of building a castle at
Beverley? and was it not again his banner, saved from the fire when the
town and minster were burnt in 1186, which rendered Edward I. victorious
in his invasion of Scotland? Did not his tomb sweat blood on that famous
day of Agincourt, and the rumour thereof bring Henry V. and his lovely
Kate hither on a pilgrimage?
Then the chronicler tells us that one while the provost and burgesses,
resolving to enlarge and beautify the minster, brought together the best
workmen from all parts of England; and later, that the corporation
repaired the edifice with stones taken from the neighbouring abbey of
Watton. And so bitter became the quarrels between Hull and Beverley,
that some of the chief men encouraged the insurrectionary movements
known as the _Rising of the North_ and the _Pilgrimage of Grace_, with
no other purpose than to damage their rivals. The burgesses of Beverley,
not having the fear of the marshal before their eyes, were accused of
unfair trading: of keeping two yard measures and two bushels: unlawfully
long and big to buy with--unlawfully short and small to sell with. And
when in process of time the trade of the town decayed, evil-minded
persons looked on the change as a judgment. At present there is little
of manufacture within it besides that of the implements which have made
the name of Crosskill familiar to farmers.
Some old customs lingered here obstinately. The cucking-stool was not
abolished until 1750, which some think was a hundred years too soon.
Ducking-stool-lane preserves its memory. And down to 1825, an annual
match at football was played on the Sunday before the races, to which
there gathered all the rabble of the town and adjacent villages, who for
some years successfully resisted the putting down of what had become a
nuisance. Instead of abolishing the game, it would have been better to
change the day, and hold weekly football matches on the race-course.
From the tower-top the eye takes in the site of Leckonfield, where the
Percys had a castle; of Watton Abbey, where an English Abelard and
Heloise mourned and suffered; of the scanty remains of Meaux Abbey,
founded about 1140, by William le Gros, Earl of Albemarle. Concerning
this nobleman, we read that he had vowed a pilgrimage to the Holy Land,
but grew so fat as to be detained at home against his will. Feeling
remorse, he consulted his confessor, who advised him to establish a
convent of Cistercians. A monk from Fountains, eminent alike for piety
and skill in architecture, was invited to choose a site. He selected a
park-like tract commanding a view of the Humber. The earl, loving the
place, bade him reconsider his choice; but the monk, striking his staff
into the ground, replied, "This place shall in future be called the door
of life, the vineyard of heaven, and shall for ever be consecrated to
religion and the service of God." The abbey was built and tenanted by
cowls from Fountains, and flourished until floods and high tides wasted
the lands, and the Reformation destroyed the house.
But though one man may write a poem while "waiting on the bridge at
Coventry," another may hardly, without presumption, write a long chapter
on the top of a tower. Let me end, therefore, while descending, with a
scrap of etymology. Beaver lake, that is, the lake of floating islands,
sacred to the Druids, is said by one learned scribe to be the origin of
the name Beverley. Another finds it in the beavers that colonized the
river Hull, with lea for a suffix, and point to an ancient seal, which
represents St. John seated, resting his feet on a beaver. Did not the
wise men of Camelford set up the figure of a camel on the top of their
steeple, as a weathercock, because their river winds very much, and
camel is the aboriginal British word for crooked? Other scholars trace
Beverley through Bevorlac, back to _Pedwarllech_--the four stones.
And here, by way of finish, are a few lines from Athelstan's charter:
"Yat witen all yat ever been
Yat yis charter heren and seen
Yat I ye King Athelstan
Has yaten and given to St. John
Of Beverlike yat sai you
Tol and theam yat wit ye now
Sok and sake over al yat land
Yat is given into his hand."
CHAPTER VI.
The Great Drain--The Carrs--Submerged Forest--River Hull--
Tickton--Routh--Tippling Rustics--A Cooler for Combatants--The
Blind Fiddler--The Improvised Song--The Donkey Races--Specimens
of Yorkshiremen--Good Wages--A Peep at Cottage Life--Ways and
Means--A Paragraph for Bachelors--Hornsea Mere--The Abbots'
Duel--Hornsea Church--The Marine Hotel.
About a mile from the town on the road to Hornsea, you cross one of the
great Holderness drains, broad and deep enough for a canal, which,
traversing the levels, falls into the sea at Barmston. It crosses the
hollow lands known as 'the Carrs,' once an insalubrious region of swamp
and water covering the remains of an ancient forest. So deep was the
water, that boats went from Beverley to Frothingham, and some of the
farmers found more profit in navigating to and fro with smuggled
merchandise concealed under loads of hay and barley than in cultivating
their farms. For years a large swannery existed among the islands, and
the "king's swanner" used to come down and hold his periodical courts.
The number of submerged trees was almost incredible: pines sixty feet in
length, intermingled with yew, alder, and other kinds, some standing as
they grew, but the most leaning in all directions, or lying flat. Six
hundred trees were taken from one field, and the labourers made good
wages in digging them out at twopence a piece. Some of the wood was so
sound that a speculator cut it up into walking sticks. Generally, the
upper layer consists of about two feet of peat, and beneath this the
trees were found densely packed to a depth of twenty feet, and below
these traces were met with in places of a former surface: the bottom of
the hollow formed by the slope from the coast on one side, from the
wolds on the other, to which Holderness owes its name. The completion of
the drainage works in 1835 produced a surprising change in the
landscape; green fields succeeded to stagnant water; and the islands are
now only discoverable by the 'holm' which terminates the name of some of
the farms.
A little farther, and there is the river Hull, flowing clean and
cheerful to the muddy Humber. Then comes Tickton, where, looking back
from the swell in the road, you see a good sylvan picture--the towers of
the minster rising grand and massy from what appears to be a great wood,
backed by the dark undulations of the wolds.
In the public-house at Routh, where I stayed to dine on
bread-and-cheese, the only fare procurable, I found a dozen rustics
anticipating their tippling hours with noisy revelry. The one next whom
I sat became immediately communicative and confidential, and, telling me
they had had to turn out a quarrelsome companion, asked what was the
best cure "for a lad as couldn't get a sup o' ale without wanting to
fight." I replied, that a pail of cold water poured down the back was a
certain remedy; which so tickled his fancy that he rose and made it
known to the others, with uproarious applause. For his own part he burst
every minute into a wild laugh, repeating, with a chuckle, "A bucket o'
water!"
There was one, however, of thoughtful and somewhat melancholy
countenance, who only smiled quietly, and sat looking apparently on the
floor. "What's the matter, Massey?" cried my neighbour.
"Nought. He's a fool that's no melancholy yance a day," came the reply,
in the words of a Yorkshire proverb.
"That's you, Tom! Play us a tune, and I'll dance."
"Some folk never get the cradle straws off their breech," came the ready
retort with another proverb.
"Just like 'n," said the other to me. "He's the wittiest man you ever
see: always ready to answer, be 't squire or t' parson, as soon as look
at 'n. He gave a taste to Sir Clifford hisself not long ago. He can make
songs and sing 'em just whenever he likes. I shouldn't wunner if he's
making one now. He's blind, ye see, and that makes 'n witty. We calls 'n
Massey, but his name's Mercer--Tom Mercer. Sing us a song, Tom!"
True enough. Nature having denied sight to him of the melancholy visage,
made it up with a rough and ready wit, and ability to improvise a song
apt to the occasion. He took his fiddle from the bag and attempted to
replace a broken string; but the knot having slipped two or three times,
three or four of his companions offered their aid. The operation was,
however, too delicate for clumsy fingers swollen with beer and rum, and
as they all failed, I stepped forward, took the fiddle in hand, and soon
gave it back to the minstrel, who, after a few preliminary flourishes,
interrupted by cries of "Now for 't!" struck up a song. With a voice not
unmusical, rhythm good, and rhyme passable, he rattled out a lively
ditty on the incidents of the hour, introducing all his acquaintances by
name, and with stinging comments on their peculiarities and weaknesses.
The effect was heightened by his own grave demeanour, and the fixed grim
smile on his face, while the others were kicking up their heels, and
rolling off their seats with frantic laughter.
"Didn't I tell ye so!" broke in my neighbour, as he winced a little
under a shaft unusually keen from the singer's quiver.
I was quite ready to praise the song, which, indeed, was remarkable. The
cleverest 'Ethiopian minstrel' could not chant his ditty more fluently
than that blind fiddler caught up all the telling points of the hour. He
touched upon the one who had been turned out, and on my hydropathic
prescription, and sundry circumstances which could only be understood by
one on the spot. Without pause or hesitation, he produced a dozen
stanzas, of which the last two may serve as a specimen:
"Rebecca sits a shellin' peas, ye all may hear 'em pop:
She knows who's comin' with a cart: he won't forget to stop:
And Frank, and Jem, and lazy Mat, got past the time to think,
With ginger-beer and rum have gone and muddled all their drink.
With a fol lol, riddle, liddle, lol, lol, lol!
"Here's a genelman fro' Lunnon; 'tis well that he cam' doun;
If he'd no coom ye rantin' lads would happen had no tune:
Ye fumbled at the fiddle-strings; he screwed 'em tight and strong;
Success to Lunnon then I say, and so here ends my song.
With a fol lol, riddle, liddle, lol, lol, lol!"
Lusty acclamations and a drink from every man's jug rewarded the
fiddler, and a vigorous cry was set up for "The Donkey Races," another
of his songs, which, as lazy Mat told me, "had been printed and sold by
hundreds." The blind man, nothing loth, rattled off a lively prelude,
and sang his song with telling effect. The race was supposed to be run
by donkeys from all the towns and villages of the neighbourhood: from
Patrington, Hedon, Hull, Driffield, Beverley, and others, each possessed
of a certain local peculiarity, the mention of which threw the company
into ecstacies of merriment. And when the "donkey from York" was
introduced along with his "sire Gravelcart" and his "dam Work," two of
the guests flumped from their chairs to laugh more at ease on the floor.
The fiddler seemed to enjoy the effect of his music; but his grim smile
took no relief; the twinkle of the eye was wanting. He was now sure of
his game, for the afternoon at least.
While looking round on the party, I had little difficulty in discerning
among them the three principal varieties of Yorkshiremen. There was the
tall, broad-shouldered rustic, whose stalwart limbs, light gray or blue
eyes, yellowish hair, and open features indicate the Saxon; there was
the Scandinavian, less tall and big, with eyes, hair, and complexion
dark, and an intention in the expression not perceptible in the Saxon
face; and last, the Celt, short, swarthy, and Irish looking. The first
two appeared to me most numerous in the East and North Ridings, the last
in the West.
On the question of wages they were all content. Here and there a man got
eighteen shillings a week; but the general rate was fifteen shillings,
or "nine shill'n's a week and our meat" (diet), as one expressed it.
Whatever folk might do in the south, Yorkshire lads didn't mean to work
for nothing, or to put up with scanty food. "We get beef and mutton to
eat," said lazy Mat, "and plenty of it."
The road continues between fat fields and pastures, skirts a park
bordered by noble trees, or tall plantations, in which the breeze
lingers to play with the branches: here and there a few cottages, or a
hamlet, clean in-doors, and pretty out of doors, with gay little
flower-gardens. Frequent thunder-showers fell, and I was glad to shelter
from the heaviest under a roof. Always the same cleanliness and signs of
thrift, and manifest pleasure in a brief talk with the stranger. And
always the same report about wages, and plenty of work for men and boys;
but a slowness to believe that sending a boy to school would be better
than keeping him at work for five shillings a week. I got but few
examples of reading, and those far from promising, and could not help
remembering how different my experiences had been the year before in
Bohemia.
One of the cottages in which I took shelter stands lonely in a little
wood. The tenant, a young labourer, who had just come home from work,
"not a bit sorry," as he said, "that 'twas Saturday afternoon," entered
willingly into conversation, and made no secret of his circumstances.
His testimony was also favourable as regards wages. He earned fifteen
shillings a week, and didn't see any reason to complain of hard times,
for he paid but three pounds a year for his cottage, which sum he
recovered from his garden in vegetables and flowers, besides sundry
little advantages which at times fall to the lot of rustics. He eat
meat--beef or mutton--"pretty well every day," and was fully persuaded
that without enough of good food a man could not do a fair day's work.
While we talked his wife was putting the finishing touch to the day's
cleaning by washing the brick floor, and without making herself unclean
or untidy, as many do. Her husband had shown himself no bad judge of
rustic beauty when he chose her as his helpmate, and her good looks were
repeated in their little daughter, who ran playfully about the room. I
suggested that the evening, when one wished to sit quiet and
comfortable, was hardly the time to wet the floor. "I'd rather see it
wet than mucky" (_mooky_, as he pronounced it), was the answer; and
neither husband nor wife was ready to believe that the ill-health too
plainly observable among many cottagers' children arises from avoidable
damp. To wash the floor in the morning, when no one had occasion to sit
in the room, would be against all rule.
"Stay a bit longer," said the young man, as I rose when the shower
ceased; "I like to hear ye talk."
And I liked to hear him talk, especially as he began to praise his wife.
It was such a pleasure to come home when there was such a lass as that
to make a man comfortable. Nobody could beat her at making a shirt or
making bread, or cooking; and he opened the oven to show me how much
room there was for the loaves. Scarcely a cottage but has a grate with
iron oven attached, and in some places the overpowering heat reminded me
of my friend's house in Ulrichsthal. Then we had a little discourse
about books. He liked reading, and had a Bible for Sundays, and a few
odd volumes which he read in the evenings, but not without difficulty;
it was so hard to keep awake after a day out of doors.
Meanwhile I made enticing signs to the merry little lassie, and at last
she sat without fear on my knee, and listened with a happy smile and
wondering eyes to my chant of the pastoral legend of _Little Bopeep_.
Such good friends did we become, that when at length I said "good-bye,"
and shook hands, there was a general expression of regret, and a hope
that I would call again. I certainly will the next time I visit
Holderness.
Often since has this incident recurred to my mind, and most often when
the discussion was going on in the newspapers concerning the impropriety
of marriage on three hundred a year. I wished that the writers,
especially he who sneered at domestic life, could go down into
Yorkshire, and see how much happiness may be had for less than fifty
pounds a year. As if any selfish bachelor enjoyments, any of the talk of
the clubs, were worth the prattle of infancy, the happy voices of
childhood, the pleasures and duties that come with offspring! Sandeau
deserved to be made _Academicien_, if only for having said that "un
berceau est plus eloquent qu'une chaire, et rien n'enseigne mieux a
l'homme les cotes serieux de sa destinee."
A mile or two farther and water gleams through the trees on the right.
It is Hornsea Mere, nearly two miles in length, and soon, when the road
skirts the margin, you see reedy shallows, the resort of wild-fowl, and
swans floating around the wooded islands; and at the upper end the belts
and masses of trees under which the visitors to Hornsea find pleasant
walks while sauntering out to the sylvan scenery of Wassand and
Sigglesthorne. The lake, said a passing villager, averages ten feet in
depth, with perhaps as much more of mud, and swarms with fish, chiefly
pike and perch. He added something about the great people of the
neighbourhood, who would not let a poor fellow fish in the mere, and
ordered the keeper to duck even little boys poaching with stick and
string. And he recited with a gruff chuckle a rhyming epitaph which one
of his neighbours had composed to the memory of a clergyman who had made
himself particularly obnoxious. It did not flatter the deceased.
In Henry the Third's reign, as may be read in the _Liber Melsae_, or
Chronicle of the Abbey of Meaux, the Abbot of St. Mary's at York
quarrelled with him of Meaux, about the right to fish in the mere, and
not being able to decide the quarrel by argument, the pious churchmen
had recourse to arms. Each party hired combatants, who met on the
appointed day, and after a horse had been swum across the mere, and
stakes had been planted to mark the Abbot of St. Mary's claim, they
fought from morning until nightfall, and Meaux lost the battle, and with
it his ancient right of fishery.
In Elizabeth's reign, the Countess of Warwick granted to Marmaduke
Constable the right to fish and fowl for "the some of fyftye and five
pounds of lawful English money." This Marmaduke, who thus testified his
love of fin and feather, was an ancestor of Sir Clifford Constable, the
present "Lord Paramount," upon whom the blind fiddler exercised his wit.
Hornsea church stands on an eminence at the eastern end between the mere
and the village. Its low square tower once bore a tall spire, on which,
as is said, the builder had cut an inscription:--
Hornsea steeple, when I built thee,
Thou was 10 miles off Burlington,
Ten miles off Beverley, and 10 miles off sea;
but it fell during a gale in 1773. The edifice is a specimen of
fifteenth-century architecture, with portions of an earlier date. The
crypt under the chancel was at one time a receptacle for smuggled goods,
and the clerk was down there doing unlawful work when the tempest smote
the spire, and frightened him well-nigh to death. The memory of the last
rector is preserved by an altar tomb of alabaster, and of William Day,
gentleman, who "dyed" in 1616, by a curious epitaph:
If that man's life be likened to a day,
One here interr'd in youth did lose a day
By death, and yet no loss to him at all,
For he a threefold day gain'd by his fall;
One day of rest in bliss celestial,
Two days on earth by gifts terrestryall--
Three pounds at Christmas, three at Easter Day,
Given to the poure until the world's last day.
This was no cause to heaven; but, consequent,
Who thither will, must tread the steps he went.
For why? Faith, Hope, and Christian Charity,
Perfect the house framed for eternity.
Hornsea village is a homely-looking place, with two or three inns, a
post-office, and little shops and houses furbished up till they look
expectant of customers and lodgers. Many a pair of eyes took an
observation of me as I passed along the street, and away up the hill,
seeking for quarters with an open prospect. Half a mile farther, the
ground always rising, and you come to the edge of a clay cliff, and a
row of modern houses, and the _Marine Hotel_ in full view of the sea.
Even at the first glance you note the waste of the land. As at Kilnsea,
so here. A few miles to the south, between us and Owthorne, stands the
village of Aldborough, far to the rear of the site once occupied by its
church. The sea washed it away. That church was built by Ulf, a mighty
thane, in the reign of Canute. A stone, a relic of the former edifice,
bearing an inscription in Anglo-Saxon, which he caused to be cut, is
preserved in the wall of the present church. This stone, and Ulf's horn,
still to be seen in York Minster, are among the most venerable
antiquities of the county.
Hornsea is a favourite resort of many Yorkshire folk who love quiet;
hence a casual traveller is liable to be disappointed of a lodging on
the shore. There was, however, a room to spare at the hotel--a top room,
from which, later in the evening, I saw miles of ripples twinkling with
moonlight, and heard their murmur on the sand through the open window
till I fell asleep.
CHAPTER VII.
Coast Scenery--A waning Mere, and wasting Cliffs--The Rain and
the Sea--Encroachment prevented--Economy of the Hotel--A Start
on the Sands--Pleasure of Walking--Cure for a bad Conscience--
Phenomena of the Shore--Curious Forms in the Cliffs--Fossil
Remains--Strange Boulders--A Villager's Etymology--
Reminiscences of "Bonypart" and Paul Jones--The last House--
Chalk and Clay--Bridlington--One of the Gipseys--Paul Jones
again--The Sea-Fight--A Reminiscence of Montgomery.
I was out early the next morning for a stroll. The upper margin of the
beach, covered only by the highest tides, is loose, heavy sand, strewn
with hardened lumps of clay, fatiguing to walk upon; but grows firmer as
you approach the water. The wheels of the bathing-machines have broad
wooden tires to prevent their sinking. The cliffs are, as we saw near
the Spurn, nothing but clay, very irregular in profile and elevation,
resembling, for the most part, a great brown bank, varying in height
from ten feet to forty. The hotel stands on a rise, which overtops the
land on each side and juts out farther, commanding a view for miles,
bounded on the north by that far-stretching promontory, Flamborough
Head; and to the south by the pale line, where land and water meet the
sky. The morning sun touching the many jutting points, while the
intervals lay in thin, hazy shadow, imparted something picturesque to
the scene, which vanished as the hours drew on, and the stronger light
revealed the monotonous colour and unclothed surface of the cliffs.
Towards evening the picturesque reappears with the lights falling in the
opposite direction.
A short distance south of the hotel, a stream runs from the mere to the
sea. The land is low here, so low that unusually high tides have forced
their way up the channel of the stream to the lake, and flooded the
grounds on both sides; and the effect will be, as Professor Phillips
says, the entire drainage of the mere, and production of phenomena
similar to those which may be seen on the other parts of the coast of
Holderness: a depression in the cliffs exposing a section of deposits
such as are only formed under a large surface of standing water. The
result is a mere question of time; and if it be true that Hornsea church
once stood ten miles from the sea, within the historical period, the
scant half-mile, which is now all that separates it from the hungry
waves, has no very lengthened term of existence before it. More than a
mile in breadth along the whole coast from Bridlington to Spurn has been
devoured since the Battle of the Standard was fought.
An old man of eighty who lives in the village says there are no such
high tides now as when he was a boy; and if he be not a romancer, the
low ground from the sea to the mere must, at least once, have presented
the appearance of a great lake. But the wasting process is carried on by
other means than the sea. I saw threads of water running down the
cliffs, produced by yesterday's rain, and not without astonishment at
the great quantities of mud they deposit at the base, forming in places
a narrow viscous stream, creeping in a raised channel across the sand,
or confused pasty heaps dotted with pools of liquid ochre. Mr. Coniton,
the proprietor of the hotel, told me that he believed the rain had more
influence than the sea in causing the waste of land, and he showed me
the means he employed to protect his territory from one and the other.
To prevent the loss by rain, which he estimates, where no precautions
are taken, at a foot a year, he at first sloped his cliff at such an
angle that the water runs easily down and with scarcely appreciable
mischief. Then, to protect the base, he has driven rows of piles through
the sand into the clay beneath, and these, checking the natural drift of
the sand to the southward, preserve the under stratum. Where no such
barrier exists, the waves in a winter storm sweep all the sand clean
off, and lay bare the clay, and tumbling upon it with mighty shocks,
sometimes wear it down a foot in the course of a tide. By this lowering
of the base, the saturated soil above, deprived of support, topples
over, leaving a huge gap, which only facilitates further encroachments;
and in the course of a few tides the fallen mass is drifted away to
enlarge the shoals in the estuary of the Humber.
Mr. Coniton entered into possession fifteen years ago, and in all that
time, so effectual are the safeguards, has lost none of his land. The
edge, he says, has not receded, and, to show what might be, he points to
his neighbour's field, which has shrunk away some yards to the rear.
The space between the hotel and the edge of the cliff is laid out as a
lawn, which, sheltered by a bank on the north, forms an agreeable
outlook and lounging-place, while gravelled paths lead to an easy
descent to the sands at each extremity of the premises. The house is
well arranged; there is no noise, no slackness in the service; and
families may live as privately as in a private residence. The charge for
adults is four shillings a day; for young children, half a guinea a
week, without stint as to the number of meals: to which must be added
the cost of rooms and attendance. The charges to casual guests are as
reasonable as could be desired, contrasting favourably in this
particular with my experiences at Hull and in certain of the inland
towns and villages. Ninepence a day for service and boots is charged in
the bill; hence you can depart without being troubled to "remember"
anybody. An omnibus arrives every day from Beverley during the
season--May to November. The distance is thirteen miles.
The falling tide had left a breadth of comparatively firm sand by the
time I was ready to start, and along that I took my way to Bridlington:
another stage of thirteen miles. The morning was bounteous in elements
of enjoyment: a bright sun, great white clouds sailing high across the
blue, a south-westerly breeze, which made the sea playful and murmurous:
all gratifying to the desire of a wayfarer's heart. I could not help
pitying those farmers at Beverley, who saw no pleasure in walking. No
pleasure in the surest promotion of health and exercise! No pleasure in
the steady progressive motion which satisfies our love of change without
hindering observation! No pleasure in walking, that strengthens the
limbs and invigorates the lungs! No pleasure in arming the sling against
the giant! No pleasure in the occasion of cheerful thoughts and manifold
suggestions which bring contentment to the heart! Walking is an exercise
which in our days might replace, more commonly than it does, the rude
out-door recreations of former times; and if but a few of the many
hundreds who put on their Sunday clothes to lounge the hours away at the
corner of a street, would but take a ten miles' walk out to the country
lanes or breezy moorlands, they would find benefit alike to their
manhood and morals. If I remember rightly, it is one of the old Greeks
who says that walking will almost cure a bad conscience; and, for my
part, I am never so ready to obey the precept of neighbourly love as
when my sentiments are harmonized by walks of seven or eight leagues a
day.
The sands are of varying consistency. In some places you leave deep
footprints; and nowhere is the firmness equal to that we shall find
farther north, except on the wet border from which the wave has just
retired. Mile after mile it stretches before you, a broad slope of sand,
sparely roughened here and there by pebble drifts. At times you see
numerous rounded lumps lying about of many sizes, which at a distance
resemble sleeping turtles, and on a nearer view prove to be nothing but
masses of hardened clay, water-worn, and as full of pebbles as a canon's
pudding is of plums. These are portions of the bottoms of lakes overrun
by the sea; stubborn vestiges, which yield but slowly. At times the
shortest route takes you through watery flats, or broad shallow streams,
where little rivers are well-nigh swallowed by the sand as they run
across to the sea. A little farther and you come to a low bank,
everywhere cut up by glistening ripple-marks, or to a bare patch of
clay, which feels like india-rubber under your foot.
And the cliffs taken thus furlong by furlong offer a greater variety
than appears at first sight. Here, the clay is cracked in such a way as
to resemble nothing so much as a pile of huge brown loaves; now it falls
away into a broken hollow patched with rough grass; now it juts again so
full of perpendicular cracks that you liken it to a mass of starch; now
it is grooved by a deep gully; now a buttress terminates in a crumbling
pyramid--umber mottled with yellow; now it is a rude stair, six great
steps only to the summit; now a point, of which you would say the
extremity has been shaped by turf-cutters; now a wall of pebbles,
hundreds of thousands of all sizes, the largest equal in bigness to a
child's head; now a shattered ruin fallen in a confused heap. Such are
some of the appearances left by the waves in their never-ending
aggressions.
In one hollow the disposition of the clay was so singular, and
apparently artificial, and unlike anything which I had ever seen, that I
could only imagine it to be a recess in which a party of Assyrian
brickmakers had been at work and left great piles of their bricks in
different degrees of finish. It was easier to imagine that than to
believe such effects could be produced by the dash of the sea.
The greatest elevation occurs about Atwick and Skirlington, places
interesting to the palaeontologist, on account of fossils--an elephant's
tusk, and the head and horns of the great Irish elk--found in the
cliffs. Farther on the cliff sinks to a mere bank, six feet in height,
but, whether high or low, you need not fear a surprise by the rising
tide, for you can scramble up anywhere out of reach of the water.
Looking inland from these points you see always the same character of
scenery, and where a path zigzags up you will notice large trays used
for carrying up the heaps of pebbles there accumulated, for the
construction of drains, fences, and walls. Among remarkable curiosities
are two large boulders--one of a slaty rock, the other of granite half
embedded in the sand. From what part of the country were they drifted to
their present position?
Here and there I fell in with a villager taking a quiet walk on the
beach, and leading two or three little children. One of them told me
that the Stricklands, a well-known family in Holderness, derived their
name from Strikeland; that is, they were the first to _strike_ the
_land_ when they came over. Collectors of folk-lore will perhaps make a
note of this rustic etymology. He remembered hearing his father talk of
the alarm that prevailed all along the coast when there was talk of
"Bonypart's" invasion; and how that Paul Jones never sailed past without
firing a ball at Rolleston Hall, that stood on a slope in sight of the
sea, where dwelt Mr. Brough, who, as Marshal to the Court of Admiralty,
had to direct the proceedings on the trial of Admiral Byng.
Here and there are parties of country lads bathing; or trying which can
take the longest jump on the smooth sand; or squatting in soft places
idly watching the waves, and exasperating their dogs into a fight.
After passing Skipsea, and the northern end of the Barmston drain, the
lone house in the distance catches your eye; the last house of Auburn, a
village devoured by the sea. The distance is deceptive along the level
shore; but when at length you come to the spot, you see a poor
weather-beaten cottage on the top of the cliff, and so close to the edge
that the eastern wall forms but one perpendicular line with the cliff
itself. You can hardly help fancying that it will fall at any moment,
even while you are looking; but so it has stood for many years; a fact
the more remarkable, as in this place the cliff projects as if in
defiance of the ruthless waters. Look at the old maps, and you will
read: "Here Auburn washed away by the sea;" and the lone house remains a
melancholy yet suggestive monument of geological change.
Now Bridlington comes in sight, and immediately beyond you see a change
in the aspect of the cliffs. The chalk formation which stretches across
England from Hampshire to Yorkshire, makes its appearance here as a thin
white band under the clay, becoming thicker and thicker, till at length
the whole cliff is chalk from base to summit, and the great promontory,
of snowy whiteness, gleams afar in the sunlight along the shores and
across the sea. The chalk opposes a barrier, which, though far less
stubborn than the volcanic rocks of Cornwall, is yet more enduring than
the clay: hence the land rushes proudly out on the domain of ocean.
Nearness, however, while it shows you the mouths of caverns and gullies,
like dark shades in the chalk, markedly shortens the headland to the
eye.
The last mile of cliff, as you approach Bridlington is diversified by a
pale chalky stratum, about four feet thick along the top. It dips down
in places basin-like, and contrasts strangely with the clay.
Bridlington Quay, as the seaward part of the town is named, though
situated at the very rear of the Head, is, as I saw on turning the last
point, not safe from the sap and shock of the breakers. The cliff,
sunken in places, exhibits the effect of landslips in rough slopes and
ugly heaps. Two legs of the seat fixed at the corner overhang the edge
and rest upon nothing, and you see that the remainder are doomed to
follow, notwithstanding the numerous piles driven in for protection.
The two arms of the pier enclose a small harbour, one of the few places
of refuge for vessels caught by easterly gales on the Yorkshire coast--a
coast deficient in good and easily-accessible harbours. A chalybeate
spring bursts from the cliff on the northern side; and near the middle
of the port an artesian well throws up a constant stream, varying with
the rise and fall of the tide. The noisy brook which you cross, on
entering the principal street, has its sources in those remarkable
springs which, known as 'the Gipseys,' gush out from the foot of the
wolds.
Bridlington attracts numbers of that class of visitors for whom Hornsea
is too quiet and Scarborough too gay. In fine weather, steamers arrive
with pleasure parties from Hull and Whitby, Flamborough Head being the
great attraction. The boatmen ask fifteen shillings a day for a boat to
sail round the Head, and give you opportunity to peer into caverns, or
to shoot seafowl should your desire be for "sport." And besides their
pay, the tough old fellows like to have a voice in provisioning the
boat, resolute to demonstrate how much your pleasure depends on "laying
in plenty of bottled porter."
The church, situate in the town about half a mile from the Quay, was at
one time as large and handsome as the minster of Beverley; but of late
years the visitor has only been able to see the remains of beauty
through grievous dilapidations, in which the hand of man was more
implicated than the weather. Paul Jones is still held responsible for
some of the mischief. Now, however, the work of restoration is
commenced, and ere long the admirable details and proportions of the
edifice will reappear.
Here it was that, attended by a convoy of seven Dutch vessels of war,
commanded by Van Tromp, Queen Henrietta Maria landed in 1643; and there
are people yet living who remember the terror inspired by the
redoubtable privateer aforementioned, while the North-American colonies
were battling for their liberties. On the 20th of September, 1779, a
messenger came in hot haste from Scarborough to Bridlington with news
that an enemy had been espied off the coast, and in the evening of the
same day the Yankee squadron was in sight from Flamborough Head.
Preparations were at once made to send the women and children into the
interior; money and valuables were hastily packed, and some of the
inhabitants, panic-stricken, actually fled. The drum beat to arms; the
Northumberland militia, then quartered in the neighbourhood, were called
out; and all the coasting-vessels bore up for Bridlington Bay, and
crowded for protection into the little harbour. Scarcely a town or
village on the Yorkshire coast but has its story of alarms and unwelcome
visitations from the American privateers.
On the 24th the timid population witnessed a sea-fight from the cliffs.
Jones, with the _Bonhomme Richard_, and the _Pallas_ and _Alliance_
frigates, intercepted the _Serapis_, of forty-four, and _Countess of
Scarbro'_, of twenty-two guns, convoying a fleet of merchant-vessels,
and at once commenced action. The two largest ships grappled, and fired
into each other for two hours, the two frigates meanwhile sailing round,
and doing their best to cripple the Englishman. The American at length
struck; but only as a feint, for when the crew of the _Serapis_ boarded,
they fell into an ambush prepared for them, and suffered so much loss,
that the _Serapis_ hauled down her colours, and the _Countess of
Scarbro'_ was taken by the _Pallas_. The victory, however, was dearly
won: the _Bonhomme Richard_ lost three hundred men in killed and
wounded, and was so grievously cut up in her hull, that the next day she
went to the bottom. Captain Pearson, of the _Serapis_, in his despatch
to the Admiralty announcing the capture of his ship, had good reason to
write, "I flatter myself with the hopes that their lordships will be
convinced that she has not been given away."
The scene of three of Montgomery's sonnets is laid at Bridlington. Turn
to the volume and read them, before you go farther.
CHAPTER VIII.
What the Boarding-House thought--Landslips--Yarborough House--
The Dane's Dike--Higher Cliffs--The South Landing--The
Flamborough Fleet--Ida, the Flamebearer--A Storm--A talk in a
Limekiln--Flamborough Fishermen--Coffee before Rum--No
Drunkards--A Landlord's Experiences--Old-fashioned Honesty.
The party--four gentlemen and one lady--at the boarding-house where I
tarried to dine, agreed unanimously that to pass a whole Sunday morning
in walking, was especially blameworthy. Besides being wrong in itself,
it was "setting such a bad example;" nor would they hear reason on the
question. With them, indeed, it was no question: they quoted the fourth
commandment, and that settled it. Any departure from that was decidedly
wrong, if not sinful. And then, perhaps out of a benevolent desire for
my spiritual welfare, they urged me to stay till the morrow, when I
might join them in a boat-trip to the Head and help to fire guns at the
seafowl. It surprised me somewhat to hear them discuss their project
with as much animation as if they had not just administered a homily to
me, or the day had not been Sunday. The possibilities of weather, the
merits of cold pies, sandwiches, and lively bottled drinks, powder and
shot moreover, and tidal contingencies, were talked about in a way that
led me to infer there was nothing at all wrong in consuming the holy day
with anticipations of pleasure to come in the days reckoned unholy. Then
one of the party set off to walk to a village three miles distant; and
presently, when I started for Flamborough, the other three accompanied
me as far as the path along the cliff was easy to the foot. So I could
only infer again that there is nothing wrong in short walks on a Sunday.
It is simply the distance that constitutes the difference between good
and evil. Some folk appear to believe that if they only sit under a
pulpit in the morning, they have earned a dispensation for the rest of
the day.
The cliffs now are sixty feet in height, broken by frequent slips in the
upper stratum of clay, and numerous cracks running along the path marks
the limits of future falls. One of the slips appeared to be but a few
hours old, and the lumps, of all dimensions, with patches of grass and
weeds sticking out here and there, lying in a great confused slope,
suggested the idea of an avalanche of clay. Ere long you come to
Yarborough House, a stately mansion standing embowered by trees about a
furlong from the shore. Holding that an Englishman has an inherent right
of way along the edge of his own country, I gave no heed to the usual
wooden warning to trespassers, erected where the path strikes inland at
the skirt of the grounds, and kept along the pathless margin of the
cliff. Nothing appeared to be disturbed by my presence except a few
rabbits, that darted as if in terror to their burrows. Once past the
grounds you come into large fields, where the grain grows so close to
the brink of the precipice, that you wonder alike at the thrift of the
Yorkshire farmers, and the skill with which they drive their ploughs in
critical situations.
As you proceed, the cliffs rise higher, interrupted in places by narrow
gullies, one of which is so deep and the farther bank so high as to
appear truly formidable, and shut out all prospect to the east. After a
difficult scramble down, and a more difficult scramble up, you find
yourself on the top of a ridge, which, stretching all across the base of
the headland from sea to sea, along the margin of a natural ravine,
remains a monument, miles in length, of the days
"When Denmark's Raven soar'd on high,
Triumphant through Northumbrian sky."
It is the "Dane's Dike," a barrier raised by our piratical Scandinavian
forefathers to protect their settlements on the great promontory. With
such a fence, they had always a refuge to fall back upon where they
could hold their own, and command the landing-places till more ships and
marauders arrived with succours. As the eye follows the straight line of
the huge grass-grown embankment, you will feel something like admiration
of the resolute industry by which it was raised, and perhaps think of
the fierce battles which its now lonely slopes must have once witnessed.
Still the cliffs ascend. Farther on I came to a broader and deeper
ravine, at the mouth of which a few boats lay moored; and others hauled
up on the beach, and coming nearer, I saw boat after boat lodged here
and there on the slopes, even to the level ground above, where, judging
from the number, the fleet found its rendezvous. It was curious to see
so many keels out of their element, most of them gay with stripes of
blue and red, and bearing the names of the wives and daughters of
_Flambro'_. The little bay, however, known as the South Landing, is one
of the two ports of Flamborough: the other, as we shall see after
passing the lighthouse, is similar in formation--a mere gap in the
cliffs. They might be called providential landing-places, for without
them the fishermen of Flamborough would have no access to the sea,
except by ladders down the precipice. As it is, the declivity is very
steep; and it is only by hauling them up to every available spot, that
room is found for the numerous boats.
Here it was that Ida, the Flamebearer, is supposed to have landed, when
he achieved the conquest of Northumbria; and here the galleys of the
Sea-Kings found a precarious shelter while the daring Northmen leapt on
shore to overrun the land in later centuries, when tradition alone
preserved the remembrance of the former invaders and their warlike
deeds.
I was prowling hither and thither in the ravine, entertained with the
Present while imagining the Past, when the clouds, grown every minute
blacker since noon, let fall their burden with something like tropical
vehemence. For some time there was no perceptible pause in the lightning
or thunder, and against the accompanying rain an umbrella was but as
gauze. I rushed into the arch of a neighbouring limekiln, and once in,
was kept there two hours by the roaring storm. Presently two fishermen,
speeding up from the landing, made for the same shelter, and of course,
under the circumstances, we fraternised at once, and talked the time
away.
Clean and well clad, they were favourable--and as I afterwards saw--not
exceptional specimens of their class. In their opinion the Flamborough
fishermen bear as good a character as any in Yorkshire--perhaps better.
About seven years ago they all resolved to work but six days a week, and
on no account to go to sea on Sundays. They held to their resolve, and,
to the surprise of most, found themselves the better. They earn quite as
much as before, if not more, and go to work with better spirit. During
the herring season it is a common practice with them to put into
Scarborough on Saturday evening, and journey home by rail for the
Sunday, taking advantage of the very low fares at which return tickets
are issued to fishermen. And as for diet, they take a good store of
bread and meat, pies even, in their boats, seeing no reason why they
should not live as well as their neighbours. A glass of rum was
acceptable, especially in cold and blowing weather: but so far as they
knew, there were very few fishermen who would not "choose hot coffee
before rum any day."
There was none of that drinking among fishermen now as there used to be
formerly. You could find some in Flamborough "as liked their glass," but
none to be called drunkards. There is a national school in the village;
but not so well attended as it might be, and perhaps would be if they
had a better schoolmaster. The people generally had pretty good health,
which is possibly the occasion why the last two doctors, finding time
hang heavy on their hands, drank themselves to death. There is, or
rather was in July, 1857, an opening for a doctor in Flamborough.
The rain still fell heavily when we left our shelter, and it kept on
till past midnight. Luckily the village was not a mile distant, and
there I took a comfortable chair by the kitchen fire of _The Ship_. The
landlord corroborated all that the fishermen had told me, with the
reservation that he found it difficult to clear his room of tipplers on
Saturday night, although none could be set down as drunkards. At times
he put on his clock ten minutes, to ensure a clearance before the Sunday
morning, resolutely refusing to refill the glasses after twelve. The
guests would go away growling out a vow never to return to such an
inhospitable house; but not one kept the vow more than a fortnight.
When, nineteen years ago, he determined not to open his house on Sunday
to any but strangers who might chance to arrive from a distance, the
village thought itself scandalized, and the other public-houses
predicted his ruin. They were, however, mistaken. _The Ship_ still
flourishes; and the host and his family "find themselves none the worse
for going to a place of worship, and keeping the house quiet one day in
seven."
"Sometimes," he ended, "we don't think to fasten the front door when we
go to bed; but it's all the same; nobody comes to disturb us." Which may
be taken as an indication that honesty has not yet abandoned
Flamborough.
CHAPTER IX.
Men's and Women's Wages--The Signal Tower--The passing Fleet--
The Lighthouse--The Inland View--Cliff scenery--Outstretching
Reefs--Selwick's Bay--Down to the Beach--Aspect of the Cliffs--
The Matron--Lessons in Pools--Caverns--The King and Queen--
Arched Promontories--The North Landing--The Herring-Fishers--
Pleasure Parties--Robin Lyth's Hole--Kirk Hole--View across
little Denmark--Speeton--End of the Chalk--Walk to Filey.
A fresh, bright morning succeeded the stormy night, and it was but a few
hours old when, after a look at the old Danish tower at the west of the
village, I walked across the fields to the lighthouse. A woman trudging
in the same direction with a hoe on her shoulder said, after I had asked
her a few questions, she wished she were a man, for then she would get
nine shillings a week and her meat, instead of one shilling a day and
feeding herself, as at present. However, 'twas better than nothing.
Presently her daughter came up, a buxom maiden, wearing her bonnet in a
way which saved her the affliction of shrugs and the trouble of tying.
It was front behind: a fashion which leaves no part of the head exposed,
shelters the poll, and looks picturesque withal. It prevails, as I
afterwards noticed, among the rustic lasses everywhere.
As I passed the old stone tower near the coast-guard station, the
signal-man was busy raising and lowering his flag, for a numerous fleet
of coasting-vessels was running by to the southward, each telling its
name as it came within signal distance. The man sends a daily list of
the names to London for publication, whereby coal-merchants and others
hear of cargoes on the way, and calculate the time of their arrival. It
is a peculiarity of Flamborough Head, an enlivening one, that ships can
keep so close in that the men on their decks are distinctly seen, and
their voices heard by one standing on the cliff.
The lighthouse, a circular white tower, eighty-two feet in height,
stands on the verge of the cliff, displaying inside and out all that
admirable order and cleanliness characteristic of British lighthouses.
There is no difficulty in obtaining admittance; you sign your name in a
book, and are forthwith conducted up to the lantern by the chief or one
of his aids. The light is revolving, alternately white and red, and can
be seen at a distance of thirty miles. But here, elevated two hundred
and fifty feet above the sea, you feel most interested in the prospect.
No "shadowy pomp of woods" arrests the eye looking landwards, but a
region bleak and bare in aspect rolling away to the distant wolds, the
line of uplands which, sweeping round, approaches the coast about
Scarborough. The village with its windmill, and the few farms that are
in sight, look naked and comfortless: not an inviting territory for an
invader given to the picturesque. But seawards, and along the rugged
front of the cliffs, grandeur and variety exert their charm. Here the
up-piled chalk flings out a bold perpendicular buttress, solid from base
to summit; there the jutting mass is isolated by yawning cracks and
chasms, and underneath, as we shall presently see, is fretted into
fantastic shapes, pierced through and through, or worn into caverns by
the headlong billows. In places a broken slope of rocky hummocks and
patches of grass, weeds, and gravel descends, more or less abruptly, to
the beach, opening a view of the long weed-blackened reefs that,
stretching out from the Head, afford a measure of the amazing
encroachments of the sea. Northwards, the bluff crowned by Scarborough
Castle, backed by higher elevations, closes the view; to the south you
have the low, fading coast of Holderness; and all the while brigs,
ships, and schooners are sailing past, more than a hundred in sight,
some of them so near that you fancy they will hardly escape the lurking
points of the dark reef. One small vessel, the keeper told me, had
touched the day before, and lay fast and helpless till, the weather
being calm, she floated off by the succeeding tide. You can look down
into Selwicks Bay, and see men and boys quarrying chalk, and donkeys
laden with heavy panniers of the lumps, toiling painfully up the steep
winding road which forms the only approach. The farther horn of the
little bay is arched and tunnelled, and, taken with the waterfall
plunging down in its rear and the imposing features of the points
beyond, invites to further exploration.
The residents at the lighthouse enjoy an abundant supply of water from a
spring within their enclosure: their garden produces cabbages and
potatoes; the neighbours are friendly, and visitors numerous. Hence life
is more cheerful to them than to the amphibious hermits who dwell at the
Spurn.
While looking for a practicable descending-place, I noticed many tufts
of thrift as thick with flowers as in an antiquated garden where the old
favourites are still cherished.
"Even here hath Nature lavished hues, and scent,
And melody; born handmaids of the ocean:
The frowning crags, with moss and rock-flowers blent,
Dazzle the eyes with sunlight, while the motion
Of waves, the breezes fragrant from the sea,
And cry of birds, combine one glorious symphony!"
The time--dead low water--being favourable for a stroll on the beach, I
scrambled down a rough slope to the south of the lighthouse, and across
the rougher beach to the rocks beyond the outmost point, where, turning
round, I could view the cliffs in either direction. And a striking scene
it is! A wild beach, as rugged with water-worn lumps of chalk as any
lover of chaos could desire. Here the cliff jutting proudly, the white
patches gleaming brightly where masses of chalk have recently fallen,
and the harder portions presenting a smooth, marble-like appearance;
there receding into the shade, and terminating in darksome hollows, the
mouths of gullies and caverns; and everywhere broken up with buttresses,
piers, and columnar projections, the bases of which are garnished with a
belt of shelly incrustation, and a broad brown fringe of weed. Above,
the white surface is varied by streaks and stains of yellow and green;
and seafowl innumerable crowd on all the ledges, or wheel and dart in
restless flight, as if proud to show their white wings to the sun.
The reef stretches out a quarter of a mile, as one may guess, worn here
and there with channels narrow and deep, along which the water rolls
with intermittent rush and roar, reminding the loiterer here in the
slumberous July weather of tremendous energies lulled to repose. I
walked round the Matron--an isolated pyramid of chalk--and patted her on
the back; and strode from one little pool to another, taking an
unscientific lesson in natural history while watching the animal and
vegetable occupants, and those that seemed to be as much one as the
other.
I picked up a fine specimen of the hermit crab, and proved the strength
of local attachment: it would not be coaxed from its hermitage--the
shell of a whelk. I saw a limpet give its shell half a rotation, then
grow tall for an instant, and then shut itself snugly down upon the
rock. At times, while I stood quite still, 'ninnycocks,' that is, young
lobsters, would venture out from their crevices, and have a frolic in
their weedy basin; but they would tolerate no intruder, and darted into
undiscoverable retreats on my slightest movement. And the animated
flowers that displayed their orange and crimson petals at the bottom of
the basin were equally mistrustful, and shut themselves up if I did but
put my hand in the water, even after they had looked on without winking
at the gambols of the ninnycocks.
There are times when ignorance has a charm, and this was one of them.
How much happier to sit and watch a crowd of weeds, a very forest in
miniature, tenanted by creeping things innumerable, and to have your
faculty of wonder excited as well as admiration while observing them in
full liberty, than to come prepared to call one an ascidian, another an
entomostracan, and so on, and to assign to each its place in the
phycological handbook, or the zoological catalogue!
In some of the smallest and deepest caverns which curve as they enter
the cliff, you get effects of cross lights from their inner extremity,
and see the glistening of the walls, which, worn smooth by the water,
appear to be varnished. In all the floor rises more or less rapidly; and
in one, a hundred paces deep, the rush and roar of the surge outside
comes only as a gentle murmur, and a slow drip-drip from the crevices
has an impressive sound there in the gloom where the entrance cannot be
seen.
I took advantage of the opportunity, and explored most of the openings,
catching sight now and then of belemnites and other curious fossils in
the chalk, wading at times knee-deep in weed, and scrambled round the
bays on each side of the point, and failed not to salute the venerable
King and Queen.
Having rambled about till the rising tide began to cut off the way round
the promontories, and the crabbers came in from their raid on the reefs,
I climbed the rough slope, and paced away for the North Landing. Beyond
Selwicks Bay the cliff is more broken and cut up into romantic coves and
bays, with confused landslips here and there, and in places the green
turf rushing half way down masks the chalk; and everywhere are thousands
of birds, with their ceaseless cry and clang. Isolated masses are
numerous; and from one point I could count eight headlands, each pierced
by an arch. And here the water, no longer stained with clay, shows green
and bright along the base of the cliff, beautifully pellucid where it
rolls over a bottom of chalk, contrasting strangely with darksome gulfs
and broad beds of weed. And mingling with the cry of birds, there comes
from time to time to your ear the noisy report of the guns, or the chant
of the fishermen, as rocked on the swell, they sit watching their nets.
The North Landing is a gap similar to the South, but broader, and with
an outlet wide enough to be described as a bay. Here I saw some sixty or
eighty boats perched from top to bottom of the steep slope; and groups
of fishermen with their families, men, women, and children, all busy
with preparations for the herring fishery. While some sorted the nets,
others lifted in big stones for ballast, or set up the masts, and others
pushed their boats down to meet the tide, and all in high good humour;
while all about there prevailed a strong fishy smell. And besides the
fishermen, there were parties of young men with their guns embarking for
a sporting cruise; some armed only with parasols and accompanied by
ladies, setting off for a sail round the Head; for this is the chief
port of Flamborough, and the _North Star_, a public-house at the top of
the hill, is convenient for victual.
The advance of the tide prevented my seeing Robin Lyth's Hole, a cavern
on the eastern side of the Landing; named, as some say, after a certain
smuggler who kept his unlawful merchandise therein; or to commemorate
the name of a man who was caught in the cavern by the tide, and saved
his life by clinging to the topmost ledge till the water fell. Another
cavern is known as the Dovecote; another as Kirk Hole, and of this the
tradition runs that it extends far underground to the village
churchyard.
I climbed up the western side of the gap, and continued my way along the
cliffs, which maintain their elevation. Soon I came to the northern end
of the Dike, a height of three hundred feet, and from the top beheld the
whole territory of Little Denmark, and the sea all the way round to the
lighthouse, and the southern end of the Dike. According to Professor
Phillips, this remarkable bank was probably already in existence when
the Danes landed: "perhaps earlier than the Anglian invasion," he says;
"perhaps it is a British work, like many other of the entrenchments on
these anciently peopled hills."
A mile farther, and the cliff rises to a height of more than four
hundred feet. In some places the bank which encloses the fields is broad
enough for a footpath; but you must beware of the landslips. The fences,
which are troublesome to climb, project beyond the edge of the cliff to
keep the cows, as an old farmer said, "from persevering after the grass
and tumbling over." Then at Speeton the chalk turns inland away from the
coast, and the cliff makes a deep hollow curve, chiefly gravel and dark
blue clay, abounding in fossils. To avoid the curve, I zigzagged down to
the beach; but was presently stopped by a point against which the waves
were dashing breast high. I scrambled over it, and was struck by its
curious appearance. It seemed to be a high clay buttress, which had
fallen perhaps within a few weeks, and was broken up into masses of
somewhat regular form, resembling big loaves, and the long grass that
had once waved on the surface now looked like dishevelled thatch. It was
an interesting example of the way in which the sea commences its
ravages.
Farther on the cliffs diminish in height, and are furrowed by numerous
streamlets, and the rugged, stony beach changes to smooth, yielding
sand. Filey comes in sight, and Filey Brig, a long black bar stretching
into the sea from the extreme point of the great bay, half concealed at
times by a quivering ridge of foam. Then we pass from the East to the
North Riding, and ere long we look up at Filey--a _Royal Hotel_, a
crescent, and rows of handsome houses, coldish of aspect, a terrace
protected by a paved slope, and gravelled paths and a stair for easy
access to the beach. The terrace commands a view over the bay, and of
the cliffs all the way to Flamborough.
CHAPTER X.
Old and New Filey--The Ravine--Filey Brig--Breaking Waves--
Ragged Cliffs--Prochronic Gravel--Gristhorp Bay--Insulated
Column--Lofty Cliffs--Fossil Plants--Red Cliff--Cayton Bay--Up
to the Road--Bare Prospect--Cromwell Hotel and Oliver's Mount--
Scarborough--The Esplanade--Watering-Place Phenomena--The Cliff
Bridge--The Museum--The Spa--The Old Town--The Harbour--The
Castle Rock--The Ancient Keep--The Prospect--Reminiscences: of
Harold Hardrada; of Pembroke's Siege; of the Papists' Surprise;
of George Fox; of Robin Hood--The One Artilleryman--Scarborough
Newspapers--Cloughton--The Village Inn, and its Guests--Tudds
and Pooads.
Here at Filey you begin to see a special characteristic of these
sea-side resorts;--the contrast between the new and old--the nineteenth
century looking proudly across a narrow debatable ground at the
sixteenth and seventeenth, putting even still earlier periods out of
countenance. Were it not for its churches, the olden time would on
occasions be made to feel ashamed of itself.
A breezy commanding outlook in front; a large handsome church, with low
square tower, in the rear; a few shops trying to reconcile themselves to
the new order of things while supplying the wants of fifteen hundred
inhabitants; more than a few true to the old order, and here and there
behind the dim panes, eggs of sea-birds, and shells, and marine stores,
in the literal sense; and two or three quiet-looking, respectable inns,
open to visitors whom the style of the _Royal Hotel_ intimidates; the
new town on the south, and a wooded ravine on the north; and such is old
Filey.
Into this ravine I descended from the church. Heavy rain had fallen
nearly all night, and the paths were so sticky and slippery, that I
wondered so pretty a spot, so capable with bushes and trees and a little
brook of contributing to recreation, should not be better kept. There is
no lack of material for solid paths in the neighbourhood; but judging
from appearances the ravine gets none of it. The path follows the course
of the brook, and brings you out upon a beach where fishing-boats, and
nets, and lobster-pots, and heaps of ballast, and a smoky fire, and
fishy refuse and a smell of tar, and sturdy men and women, make up
divers pictures for the eye, and odours for the nostrils.
As, on approaching Flamborough, we saw the chalk begin to appear at the
base of the cliff, so here we see a stratum of sandstone slanting up
beneath the clay, rising higher towards the northern horn of the bay,
and thence stretching out for three furlongs into the sea, forming the
remarkable reef known as Filey Brig. Camden describes it as "a thin slip
of land, such as the old English called File; from which the little
village Filey takes its name." We may suppose that the cliff once
projected as far, sheltering an indentation so deep that Ptolemy might
well call it the _well-havened bay_; though on this particular there are
different opinions among the learned. Even now, stripped of its cap of
clay, the reef forms a natural breakwater, of which the effect is best
seen in the quiet of the small vessels at anchor behind it.
I was fortunate in the time, for a strong north wind was blowing, and
the great waves, checked in their career, dashed headlong against the
stony barrier, and broke into little mountains of foam, bursting up here
and there in tall white intermittent jets as from a geyser; here one
solid surge tumbling over another, mingling with rush and roar in a wide
drift of spume; there flinging up gauzy whiffs of spray as if mermaids
in frolic were tossing their veils. So mighty were the shocks at times
as to inspire a feeling of insecurity in one who stood watching the
magnificent spectacle.
You can walk out to the end of the reef, and get good views of
Scarborough, about six miles distant in one direction, and away to
Flamborough on the other. The floor is generally level, interrupted in
places by great steps, channels, and boles; and by huge blocks of many
tons' weight scattered about, testifying mutely to the tremendous power
of the sea.
It is a wild scene, and wilder beyond the point, where the whole beach
is strewn with broken lumps, and ledge succeeds to ledge, now high, now
low, compelling you to many an up-and-down, stooping under a rude
cornice, or scrambling over a slippery ridge. In places the cliff
overhangs threateningly, or, receding, forms an alcove where you may sit
and feast your eye with the wondrous commotion, and your ear with the
thundering chorus of many waters.
The upper stratum of clay is worn by the twofold action of rain and
spray into singularly fantastic forms, and where it has been deeply
excavated, there, kept in by the rim of stone, lies a salt-water pool so
bright and pellucid that the temptation to bathe therein is
irresistible. I thought to get round to Gristhorp Bay, but came
presently to a recess where the breakers rushing half way up the cliff
barred all further progress. To lean against the rocky wall and feel it
throb with the shock within the shower of spray, produced an almost
painful emotion; and it seemed to me that the more tumultuous the sea
the better did it harmonize with a promontory so rugged and grim.
I retraced my steps to a stair that zigzags up the cliff on the inner
side of the point. Near this certain visitors have cut their initials in
the hard rock floor, of such dimensions that you can only imagine a day
must have been spent in the task with mallet and chisel. Vain records!
The sea will wash them out some day. When on the summit I was struck
more than before by the contrast between the rage and uproar on the
outside of the ridge, and the comparative calm inside; nor was it easy
to leave a view to which, apart from all the features of the shore, the
restless sea added touches of the sublime, wherein wrought fascination.
And all the while men, looking like pigmies in the distance, were
groping for crabs along each side of the far-stretching reef.
A little way north of the point a rustic pavilion standing in a naked
garden indicates where the visitor will find a jutting buttress whence
to contemplate the scene below. More exposed on this side, the cliff is
more cut up and broken in outline, jutting and receding in rugged
ledges, and in every hollow rests one of those limpid pools, so calm and
clear that you can see the creeping things moving between the patches of
weed at the bottom. And the beach is thickly strewn with boulders of a
size which perhaps represents the gravel of the "prochronic" era.
The elevation increases as we advance, and by-and-by looking round on
Filey, we see how it lies at the mouth of a broad vale which it requires
no great effort of imagination to believe may have been an estuary at
some very remote period, near to the time
"When the Indian Ocean did the wanton play
Mingling its billows with the Balticke sea,
And the whole earth was water."
And far as you can see inland the prospect is bare, even to the distant
hills and wolds which loom large and mountainous through the hazy
atmosphere.
Now the cliff shows bands of colour--brown, gray, and ochre, and the
lower half capped by a green slope forms a thick projecting plinth to
the perpendicular wall above. Scarborough begins to be visible in
detail, and soon we descend into Gristhorp Bay, where rough walking
awaits us. At its northern extremity stands an insulated columnar mass,
somewhat resembling the Cheesewring, on a rude pedestal shaped by the
waves from the rocky layers. Situate about fifty yards from the point,
it marks the wear of the cliff from which it has been detached, while
the confused waste of rocks left bare by the ebb suggests ages of
destruction prior to the appearance of the stubborn column.
The cliffs are of imposing height, nearly three hundred feet: a
formidable bulwark. It is heavy walking along their base, but as
compensation there are strata within reach in which you may find
exhaustless deposits of fossil plants, giant ferns, and others. And so
the beach continues round Red Cliff into Cayton Bay, where another chaos
of boulders will try your feet and ability to pick your way. To vary the
route, I turned up at Cayton Mill, past the large reservoir from which
Scarborough is supplied with water, along the edge of the undercliff to
the high road, leaving Carnelian Bay unvisited. At the hill-top you come
suddenly upon a wide and striking prospect--a great sweep of hilly
country on one hand, on the other the irregular margin of the cliffs all
the way to the town, and a blue promontory far beyond the castle bluff,
which marks our course for the morrow.
The road is good and the crops look hopeful; but the hedgerows are
scanty and stunted, and not improved by the presence of a few miserable
oaks; nor do the plantations which shelter the farm-houses and stingy
orchards appear able to rejoice though summer be come. In some places,
for want of better, the banks are topped by a hedge of furze. On the
left of the road, long offshoots from the bleak uplands of the interior
terminate with an abrupt slope, presenting the appearance of artificial
mounds. Another rise, and there is Scarborough in full view, crowding
close to the shore of its bay, terminated by the castle rock, the most
striking feature. Bright, showy houses scattered on the south and west
indicate the approaches to the fashionable quarter, and of those
farthest from the sea you will not fail to notice the _Cromwell
Hotel_--a new building in Swiss-like style of architecture, at the foot
of Oliver's Mount. The Mount--so named from a tradition that the
Protector planted his cannon there when besieging the castle--is another
of those truncated offshoots, six hundred feet in height, and the
summit, which is easily accessible and much visited, commands an
interesting prospect. You see the tree-tops in the deep valley which
divides the New Town from the Old, and rearwards, broken ground
sprinkled with wood, imparting some touches of beauty to the western
outskirts.
Then, turning to the right, you come upon a stately esplanade, and not
without a feeling of surprise after a few days' walking by yourself. For
here all is life, gaiety, and fashion. Long rows of handsome houses, of
clean, light-coloured sandstone, with glittering windows and ornamental
balconies, all looking out on the broad, heaving sea. In front, from end
to end, stretches a well-kept road, where seats, fixed at frequent
intervals, afford a pleasurable resting-place; and from this a great
slope descends to the beach, all embowered with trees and shrubs,
through which here and there you get a glimpse of a gravelled path or
the domed roof of a summer-house. And there, two hundred feet below, is
the Spa--a castellated building protected by a sea-wall, within which a
broad road slopes gently to the sands. You see visitors descending
through the grove for their morning draught of the mineral water, or
assisting the effect by a 'constitutional' on the promenade beneath;
while hundreds besides stroll on the sands, where troops of children
under the charge of nursemaids dig holes with little wooden spades. And
here on the esplanade elegant pony barouches, driven by natty little
postilions, are starting every few minutes from the aristocratic looking
hotel to air gay parties of squires and dames around the neighbourhood.
And turning again to the beach, there you see rows of bathing-machines
gay with green and red stripes, standing near the opening of the valley,
and now and then one starts at a slow pace laden with bathers to meet
the rising tide. And beyond these the piers stretch out, and the harbour
is crowded with masts, and two steamers rock at their moorings, waiting
for 'excursionists:' the whole backed by the houses of the Old Town
rising picturesquely one above the other, and crowning the castle
heights.
Nearly an hour passed before I left that agreeable resting-place, whence
you get the best view of Scarborough and its environment. Of all the
strollers I saw none go beyond what appeared to be a conventional limit;
Nature without art was perhaps too fatiguing for them. In the whole of
my walk along the coast, I met but two, and they were young men, who had
ventured a few miles from head-quarters for a real walk on the cliffs.
A bridge, four hundred feet long and seventy-five high, offers a level
crossing for foot passengers from the esplanade to the opposite side of
the deep valley above mentioned, on payment of a toll. It is at once
ornamental and convenient, saving the toil of a steep ascent and
descent, and combining the advantage of an observatory. From the centre
you get a complete view of the bay, one which the eye rests on with
pleasure, though you will hardly agree with a medical author, that it is
a "Bay of Naples." In the other direction, you look up the wooded
valley, and down upon the Museum, a Doric rotunda, built by the members
of the Scarborough Philosophical Society, for the preservation of
geological specimens. The contents are admirably classified, rocks and
fossils in their natural order; amid them rests the skeleton of an
ancient British chief; and near the entrance you may see the clumsy oak
coffin in which it was found, about twenty-five years ago, in a barrow
at Gristhorp.
Descend into the valley, and you will find pleasure in the sight of the
bridge, and miles of water seen through the light and graceful arches.
Then take a walk along the sands, and look up at the leafy slope,
crowned by the esplanade, and you will commend the enterprise which
converted an ugly clay cliff into a hanging wood. And enterprise is not
to stop here: Sir Joseph Paxton, as I heard, has been consulted about
the capabilities of the cliff to the south. Some residents, however,
think that Scarborough is already overdone.
In a small court within the Spa you may see the health-giving waters
flowing from two mouths, known from their position as North Well and
South Well. The stream is constant, and, after all the wants of the
establishment are supplied, runs across the sand to the sea. The water
has a flavour of rusty iron and salt, differing in the two wells,
although they are but a few feet apart; and the drinkers find it
beneficial in cases of chronic debility and indigestion with their
remorseless allies.
The contrast is more marked between New and Old than at Filey. There is,
however, a good, respectable look about the streets of the Old Town, and
signs of solid business, notwithstanding the collections of
knick-knackery and inharmonious plate-glass. From the broad main street
you descend by a narrow crooked street--from old through oldest to the
harbour, where old anchors, old boats, old beams and buttresses dispute
possession with the builders of new boats, who make the place noisy with
their hammering. Here as a Yorkshireman would say, were assembled all
the 'ragabash' of Scarborough, to judge by what they said and did. Boys
and men were fishing from the pier-head under the lighthouse, watched by
grizzly old mariners, who appeared to have nothing better to do than to
sit in the sun; children paddled in the foamy shallows of the heavy
breakers; carts rumbled slowly to and from the coal brigs, followed by
stout fellows carrying baskets of fish; a sight which might have shamed
the dissolute throng into something like industry.
Enclosed by the three piers which form the harbour stands a detached
pile of masonry, seemingly an ancient breakwater--all weather-beaten,
weedy, and grass-grown, with joints widely gaping, looking as if it had
stood there ever since Leland's day--a remarkable object amid the stir
of trade and modern constructions, but quite in harmony with the old
pantile-roofed houses that shut in the port. Among these you note
touches of the picturesque; and your eye singles out the gables as
reminiscences of the style which, more than any other, satisfies its
desire.
But let us go and look down on the scene from the castle rock. The
ascent is steep, yet rich in recompense. St. Mary's church, near the
summit, and the fragments of old walls standing amidst the graves,
remind us of its former dimensions, and of the demolitions it suffered
during the siege. And there rises in massive strength, to a height of
ninety feet, a remnant of the castle keep--an imposing ruin full before
us, as we cross the drawbridge, pass under the barbican, and along the
covered way, to the inner court. But the court is a large, rough
pasture, fenced on the north and east, where the cliff is bare and
perpendicular, and towards the town shut in by a range of old wall,
pierced by a few embrasures, some low buildings, and the remains of an
ancient chapel. There is no picturesque assemblage of ruins; but little
indeed besides the shattered keep, and that appears to best effect from
without. Near the chapel, Our Lady's Well, a spring famous from time
immemorial, bubbles silently up in a darksome vault.
Northwards the view extends along the rugged coast to the Peak, a lofty
point that looks down on Robin Hood's Bay, and to hazy elevations beyond
Whitby. To get a sight of the town you must return to the barbican,
where you can step up on the wall and securely enjoy a bird's-eye view:
from the row of cannon which crown the precipice sheer down to the port
and away to the Spa, all lies outspread before the curious eye.
A great height, as we have already proved, appears to be favourable to
musing, especially when the sun shines bright. And here there is much to
muse about. Harold Hardrada, when on his way to defeat and death at
Stamford Brig, landed here, and climbing the "Scarburg" with his wild
sea-rovers, lit a huge bonfire, and tossed the blazing logs over the
cliff down upon the town beneath. The burg, or fortress, was replaced in
the reign of Stephen by a castle, which, renewed by Henry II., became
one of the most important strongholds of the kingdom. Piers Gavestone
defended it vigorously against the Earl of Pembroke, but was starved
into a surrender, with what result we all know. The Roman Catholics
attempted it during their Pilgrimage of Grace, but were beaten off. In
1554, however, when Queen Mary was trying to accomplish the Pilgrims'
work, a son of Lord Stafford and thirty confederates, all disguised as
rustics, sauntered unsuspected into the outer court, where on a sudden
they surprised the sentries, and immediately admitting a reserve party
carrying concealed arms, they made themselves masters of the place. The
success of this surprise is said to have given rise to the adage
"Scarborough warning; a word and a blow, and the blow first." But after
three days the Earl of Westmoreland regained possession, and Mr.
Stafford underwent the same sharp discipline as befel Edward the
Second's favourite. At length came the struggle between Prerogative and
People, and in the triumph of the right the castle was well-nigh
demolished; and since then, time and tempest have done the rest.
Among the unfortunates who suffered imprisonment here, George Fox, the
aboriginal Quaker, has left us a most pathetic account of his
sufferings. Brought hither from Lancaster Castle, he was put into a
chamber which he likened to purgatory for smoke, into which the rain
beat, and after he had "laid out about fifty shillings" to make it
habitable, "they removed me," he writes in his _Journal_, "into a worse
room, where I had neither chimney nor fireplace. This being to the
sea-side and lying much open, the wind drove in the rain forcibly, so
that the water came over my bed and ran about the room, that I was fain
to skim it up with a platter. And when my clothes were wet, I had no
fire to dry them; so that my body was benumbed with cold, and my fingers
swelled, that one was grown as big as two." For more than a year did the
resolute Peacemaker endure pain and privation, and vindicate his
principles on this tall cliff; and when three years later, in 1669, he
again went preaching in Yorkshire, he revisited Scarborough, and "the
governor hearing I was come," he writes, "sent to invite me to his
house, saying, 'surely I would not be so unkind as not to come and see
him and his wife.' So after the meeting I went up to visit him, and he
received me very courteously and lovingly."
Five hundred years earlier, and, as the ballad tells, the merry outlaw,
Robin Hood, who
"The Yorkshire woods frequented much,"
being a-weary of forest glades and fallow deer, exclaimed,
"The fishermen brave more money have
Than any merchants two or three;
Therefore I will to Scarborough go,
That I a fisherman brave may be."
But though the "widow woman" in whose house "he took up his inn," lent
him a stout boat and willing crew, he caught no fish, and the master
laughed at him for a lubber. However, two or three days later, he
espied a ship of war sailing proudly towards them, and then it was the
master's turn to lament, for the French robbers spared no man. To him
then Robin:
"'Master, tye me to the mast,' saith he,
'That at my mark I may stand fair,
And give me my bent bow in my hand,
And never a Frenchman will I spare.'
"He drew his arrow to the very head,
And drew it with all might and maine,
And straightway, in the twinkling of an eye,
To the Frenchman's heart the arrow's gane.
* * * * *
"Then streight they boarded the French ship
They lyeing all dead in their sight;
They found within that ship of warre
Twelve thousand pound of mony bright."
The castle is national property, and as the bluff affords a good site
for offence and defence, a magazine and barracks for a company of men
have been built. For all garrison, at the time of my visit, there was
but one invalid artilleryman, who employs his leisure in constructing
models of the ruins for sale along with bottles of ginger beer. He will
talk to you about the nice water of Our Lady's Well; the cavern in the
cliff, where the officers once dined; of the cannon balls that Cromwell
sent across from Oliver's Mount; about the last whale caught on the
shore, and about the West Indies, where he lost his health; but he
remembers little or nothing of Piers Gavestone or George Fox, and is not
quite sure if he ever heard that Robin Hood went a-privateering. His
duties, he told me, were not heavy; he did not even lock the gate at
night, because folk came very early in the morning to fetch their cows
from the pasture.
Since then, that is, in the autumn of 1857, the rains occasioned a
landslip, which nearly obliterated the cavern; a whale thirty feet long
was caught floundering in the shallows; and on Seamer Moor, about three
miles distant, ancient gold and silver rings and ornaments, beads and
broken pottery, and implements of bronze and iron and a skeleton, were
found on excavating a chalky knoll.
Of course, a town of thirteen thousand inhabitants must have its
newspapers. The _Scarborough Gazette_ is a curiosity for its long list
of visitors, filling sometimes two pages. A cheap paper--the title of
which I have lost--was a curiosity to me in another way, for I could not
have believed that Yorkshire folk would read anything so stupid as the
wordy columns therein passed off for politics.
The shadows were lengthening towards the east when, after satisfying
myself with another look at the coast to the north, I took the road for
Cloughton, leaving the town by the north esplanade, where
Blenheim-terrace shows the sober style of the first improvements. Many
visitors, however, prefer the view from those plain bay-windows to that
seen from the stately houses to the south.
Cloughton is a small quiet village, with a _Red Lion_ to match, where
you may get good rustic fare--cakes, bacon, and eggs--and a simple
chamber. The landlord, a patriarch of eighty-five, still hale, and
active, who sat warming his knees at the turf fire, opened his budget of
reminiscences concerning Scarborough. The change from what it was to
what it is, was wonderful. He went there at election times. Had once
been to vote at York, years ago, "when there was a hard fight betuxt a
Milton and a Lascelles." Had never been to London, but his niece went up
to the Great Exhibition. While we talked, in came a shabby-looking
fellow with a six days' beard, for a pint of beer. He had been
trout-fishing all day on the moors--one of his means of living. He
stayed but a few minutes, and as he went out the patriarch said, "He's a
roughish one to look at, but he can make powetry." It was too late to
call him back, or I might perhaps have got a specimen.
Then came in the rustics in twos and threes for their evening pint and
pipe, most of them preferring hard porter to the ale, which was really
good. Not one had a complaint to make of hard times: wages were one and
sixpence a day, and meat, and good meat, too--beef and mutton and
pies--as much as they could eat. They didn't want to emigrate; Yorkshire
was quite good enough for them. While talking to them and listening to
their conversation among themselves, my old conviction strengthened that
the rural folk are not the fools they are commonly taken to be. Choose
such words as they are familiar with--such as John Bunyan uses--and you
can make them understand any ordinary subject and take pleasure in it.
And how happy they are when you can suggest an illustration from
something common to their daily life! I would have undertaken to give an
hour's lecture on terrestrial magnetism even, to that company; and not
one should have wished it shorter. And once having broken through their
crust of awkwardness, you find them possessed of a good fund of common
sense, quick to discern between the plausible and what they feel to be
true. Flattering speeches made at hay-homes and harvest-homes are taken
for what they are worth; and the sunburnt throng are everywhere ready to
applaud the sentiment conveyed in a reaper's reply to a complimentary
toast:
"Big bees fly high;
Little bees make the honey:
Poor men do the work;
Rich men get the money."
One of the party, lively enough to have lived when the island was "merry
England," hearing that I intended to walk through Bay Town on the
morrow, said, laughingly, "You'll find nought but _Tudds_ and _Pooads_
down there;" meaning t
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