Bridlington, June 2023

Welcome to this series of articles about a few days break in and around Bridlington in the English County of Yorkshire.

Clicking or tapping the photos below will take you to each of the articles. A link on each page will bring you back here.

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Beverley Minster

Tuesday 6 June 2023. Staying for a few days in Bridlington, we caught the 121 bus service from Bridlington to Beverley to have a look at the Minster. Officially it is the Parish Church of St John and Saint Martin. It was originally a Collegiate Church - it is not a cathedral.

The journey took just over an hour and from Beverley bus station it was a short walk to the Minster, with plenty of signposts pointing the way. It has an ancient past. St John of Beverley was Archbishop of York from 706 to c714 and had founded a monastery at Beverley c700. He was canonised as a saint in 1037 - still in Saxon times - and somewhat incredibly his remains still lie beneath the nave of the present church. The Saint John of the church's name is, however, St John the Baptist - not it's own saint.

The original church was destroyed c850 perhaps, if not probably, by Vikings. It was rebuilt and re-endowed by England's first king, King Athelstan, grandson of King Alfred the Great in the first half of the 10th century. It was rebuilt again in stone following the canonisation of the saint, a high stone tower was added several years before the Norman Conquest and the Minster became a place of pilgrimage for worshippers wishing to see and pray at the shrine of St John of Beverley.

An enclosed wooden staircase. I don't know any other details I'm afraid, it may have led to the organ or to somewhere else. I've done searches for it but they all lead to a stone spiral staircase for going up the towers or to an interior staircase set into the internal wall of the North Choir Aisle which led to a now demolished Chapter House. If you know, please leave a comment.

There are some fascinating carvings, both in stone and wood. Whilst we have a look at some of these I'll just carry on with the history a bit.

Nothing remains of the Saxon churches now. A major fire in 1188 left the Minster in need of a total rebuild and the earliest work in the present church dates from this time.

Work to complete the Minster took several hundreds of years. There were a few hiccups along the way. The collapse of a new lantern tower required parts of the building to be started again. The Black Death halted work around 1348 until towards the end of the century.

The Nave was completed by c1400 and the west twin towers were built. It is said that they were the inspiration for the towers of Westminster Abbey.

A bit of stone sculpture instead of wood. Again, I've no idea who this lady represents. Neither can I work out from her expression whether she is in rapt prayer or looking up at her husband and thinking "thou great numpty!"

Standing towards the western end of the southern aisle of the Nave, these two statues flank a doorway. They were cast from lead in 1781 and depict King Athelstan on the left (would he really have dressed like that in the 900s?) and Saint John of Beverley on the right.

The fabulous font of Frosterley marble is a remarkable survivor of the earliest Norman church and dates from c1170. The wooden cover or canopy is 18th century.

Looking west from the back of the Nave towards the organ which was built by John Snetzler and set up in the Minster in 1769. The screen was carved by a local, James Elwell in 1880.

The West Front of the Minster is unusual for the number of statues it still contains. Many of our cathedrals lost theirs in those mirthless Puritanical times. Originally they would all have been bright with paint and gilding.

Bridlington, 2023 Index
English Churches and Cathedrals Index

Halifax Minster

This article is an edited version of a larger article covering a visit to Piece Hall in Halifax, during which we decided to visit Halifax Minster. This was more down to curiosity than it was to any prior knowledge of the Minster. I can recommend a visit though - it doesn't disappoint.

This is no York Minster - it is the size of most parish churches - unsurprising as that was its role until it was raised to Minster status only as recently as 2009. It dates mainly from the 1400s, but includes some stonework from a Norman church previously on the same site some 300 years earlier.

"Old Tristram", carved circa 1701 by John Aked, holds the alms box and is thought to be an effigy of a real beggar of the time.

The font is thought to be as old as perhaps the 15th century and the undoubtedly medieval cover was once painted and generously gilded.

The tomb of Archdeacon Charles Musgrave lies underneath the church tower. He was vicar of the parish church from 1827-1875 and was instrumental in improving the town's sewerage system from an open sewer and a single privy which had to cater for 221 people. The average lifespan of a labourer in the locality at the time was a mere 22 years!

Standing in front of the organ pipes is a pulpit on wheels. To the left is the chantry chapel of William Rokeby who was vicar here from 1502-1521 and who from 1511 also became Archbishop of Dublin and who baptised King Henry VIII's first daughter, Mary Tudor, later "Bloody" Queen Mary. On his death, Rokeby's heart was sealed into a lead box and buried within the chapel. The box also contains his bowels... There was an English language class being taught to some Afghanistan refugees in the chapel so we couldn't go in. We'll have to sniff out the bowels at some more convenient time.

The organ was rebuilt in 1928 but still contains pipes from the original Snetzler organ of 1766. The church's first organist was L. William Herschel before he became King George III's personal astronomer and became famous to this day and forever as the first person to discover the planet Uranus.

To either side of the chancel gateway are carved heads on bench ends. Happy-looking souls...

The Wellington Chapel in the south east corner of the church contains the Duke of Wellington's Regimental Colours - the flags seen here, carried by standard bearers onto the battlefield.

A set of chairs in the Wellington Chapel were made by the famous furniture maker Robert "Mouseman" Thompson - also known as "Mousey" Thompson. In the 1920s he had started carving a mouse on each piece of furniture. Even on a set they would be placed in different positions and were not always easy to spot. On this one, modelled by Miss Franny, the mouse is on the front right-hand chair leg.

Fran buys one or two things from the shop and we thank the guide who had come down to point out the mice on the chairs. The sky is not promising too much as we come out to look at the external features of the church. The clock and sundial on the tower and the gargoyles.

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Halifax Piece Hall and Minster

Wednesday, 7 September 2022. We had been invited as guests of friends, David and Jeannie on a coach trip to the Piece Hall in Halifax. We said "yes" immediately without any clue as to what the Piece Hall was, because we have never yet had a bad trip with this particular group which is made up of pensioners who used to work for British Gas.

The Piece Hall is the only surviving example of a Cloth Hall - a market place for handloom weavers to fetch their woven cloth or woolen "pieces" to display them for sale. It is in the form of a quadrangle and dates from 1779. It has the look and feel of an Italian Piazza and would not look out of place in Trieste or Venice. There are 315 rooms for traders. After the Industrial Revolution the larger mills sold their products direct to buyers and it fell into disuse, being bought by Halifax Corporation for a wholesale market hall in 1868. Many of the small rooms were combined to form larger spaces.

Our first priorities on arrival were a toilet and then a drink! The ladies decided we could have some dinner, so they had cake and David and I had a sandwich each.

On the left in the foreground is a statue of Anne Lister (1791-1840), generally known as Gentleman Jack whose diaries revealed her as a lesbian and contained coded accounts of her affairs and techniques of seduction. She is buried in the nearby Halifax Minster that we shall visit shortly. The Clicky Monster was keen to fill up his camera storage card, but we decided that we would head for the Minster before exploring the Piece Hall at closer quarters.

This is no York Minster - it is the size of most parish churches - unsurprising as that was its role until it was raised to Minster status only as recently as 2009. It dates mainly from the 1400s, but includes some stonework from a Norman church previously on the same site some 300 years earlier.

"Old Tristram", carved circa 1701 by John Aked, holds the alms box and is thought to be an effigy of a real beggar of the time.

The font is thought to be as old as perhaps the 15th century and the undoubtedly medieval cover was once painted and generously gilded.

The tomb of Archdeacon Charles Musgrave lies underneath the church tower. He was vicar of the parish church from 1827-1875 and was instrumental in improving the town's sewerage system from an open sewer and a single privy which had to cater for 221 people. The average lifespan of a labourer in the locality at the time was a mere 22 years!

Standing in front of the organ pipes is a pulpit on wheels. To the left is the chantry chapel of William Rokeby who was vicar here from 1502-1521 and who from 1511 also became Archbishop of Dublin and who baptised King Henry VIII's first daughter, Mary Tudor, later "Bloody" Queen Mary. On his death, Rokeby's heart was sealed into a lead box and buried within the chapel. The box also contains his bowels... There was an English language class being taught to some Afghanistan refugees in the chapel so we couldn't go in. We'll have to sniff out the bowels at some more convenient time.

The organ was rebuilt in 1928 but still contains pipes from the original Snetzler organ of 1766. The church's first organist was L. William Herschel before he became King George III's personal astronomer and became famous to this day and forever as the first person to discover the planet Uranus.

To either side of the chancel gateway are carved heads on bench ends. Happy-looking souls...

The Wellington Chapel in the south east corner of the church contains the Duke of Wellington's Regimental Colours - the flags seen here, carried by standard bearers onto the battlefield.

A set of chairs in the Wellington Chapel were made by the famous furniture maker Robert "Mouseman" Thompson - also known as "Mousey" Thompson. In the 1920s he had started carving a mouse on each piece of furniture. Even on a set they would be placed in different positions and were not always easy to spot. On this one, modelled by Miss Franny, the mouse is on the front right-hand chair leg.

Fran buys one or two things from the shop and we thank the guide who had come down to point out the mice on the chairs. The sky is not promising too much as we come out to look at the external features of the church. The clock and sundial on the tower and the gargoyles.

And so back to the Piece Hall, where I gratefully sink into a chair again and we have a drink. (A lot has happened since my last post - I was sent for a repeat of some routine blood tests in June this year and in short order over the next month was told that I had cancer on the liver, that it was too large to remove and that it was incurable and would mean regular visits to St James Hospital in Leeds to keep tabs on it.) Life has become precious!

As we walk around the balcony of the second storey we are treated to the sight of our waitress of a few moments ago, waving David's jacket and trying to get our attention... The balconies are lined with the doors to the old trading rooms, all now containing artisan and craft or specialised shops, such as the Christmas themed products. I walked around a few of the shops and then went back down to let the others complete the circuit of balconies whilst I sat down and nodded off. "Is John alright?" asked David. Fran apparently looked over the balcony to see me head down and said "Yes, he's asleep..."

The tower and steeple of the Square Church, a non-conformist church dating from the 1850s are all that remain of the church which suffered from two fires and gales and which was demolished in 1976, leaving the tower and steeple, now incorporated as part of the new Central Library of 2017. A spot of rain wakes me up - trust a bald man to know when it is raining... Then back to the coach for the trip home which includes a very good meal at the Calf's Head near Clitheroe in the Ribble Valley.

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A Morning in York

Following our brilliant night listening to André Rieu in Leeds on Friday, we were extremely sorry to hear that a member of the orchestra had suffered a heart attack. As a result, the rest of the UK dates have been postponed. The musician has not been named but is a male and has been with the orchestra over 20 years, as have many of this close-knit orchestra. As a musician myself I know that you form very close bonds with people with whom you make music and I can understand their decision to postpone. I hope he recovers well and is able to rejoin the orchestra.

* * * * * * *

On Saturday morning we knew nothing of this. We got up lazily and had breakfast then set off eastwards towards York.

We parked near the famous Shambles and walked together for an hour before splitting up - we both had secrets to buy for each other. Well, I had something in mind for Miss Franny anyway - her excuse was that she didn't want to feel rushed because she was dragging me round shops I had no interest in... Me! Me who shows ... ah... er... no interest in shopping whatsoever... Well anyway I had a chance to buy Miss Franny's Christmas present and stagger under its weight back to the car to leave it in the boot, hoping she wouldn't notice how the rear end seemed closer to the ground than usual. My arms will shrink back to normal hopefully...

I had a wander around the city centre. There were several shops where I wasn't averse to having a look in the window and the atmosphere in the city on this last Saturday morning before Christmas Eve was quite wonderful. There were several groups of carollers singing and musicians here and there. A small European Market had been set up and the air was full of smells of pastries and the tang of spice from mulled wine.

I had a mooch along narrow side streets and passed the Minster and under one of the gates of the city which are known as Bars. I came to Kings Manor, now part of the University of York, but once a residence of kings on their travels around the kingdom. King Henry VIII stayed here during his ill-fated progress which would be the undoing of his fifth queen. Catherine Howard. Whatever the facts it must be borne in mind they married (she would have no choice in it) when she was 16 or 17 and the king was 49, huge and with a stinky leg ulcer from a jousting injury. Not a match made in Heaven...

I walked past the Theatre Royal of 1744. It is built on the site of a medieval hospital and a well, thought to be Roman, lies under its stage! The rough brickwork of the building attached to it caught my eye along with an intriguing feature...

This was a small patch of brickwork that was obviously far more modern. I wondered what the reason for this apparent repair was (and still do - no amount of searching seems to have turned anything up). If anyone knows, please leave a comment!