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

Bridlington, Yorkshire, 3-8 June 2023

Saturday 3 June 2023. After Great Yarmouth we had just two days at home then set off for Bridlington, again on the east coast. Stand by for more icicles...

We had two days at home to wash clothes, refuel the car and call in to visit my Mum before heading out again across the country but this time more or less in a straight line across from West to East.

The weather was pretty similar to Great Yarmouth with the exception that the sun was also hiding from us. A mix of grey skies, great gusts of wind and the occasional flying seagull dropping somewhere alarmingly close meant layering up. T-shirt, hoodie and lightweight jacket wasn't cutting it. I bought a new heavier jacket before the shivering stopped. I started to sketch this scene of the harbour, sitting on a bench on one of the narrow piers with a "pirate" ship taking punters on a "10-minute cruise in the bay" from just behind me.That would be 2 minutes out of the harbour wall, 3 minutes along the bay, with 5 minutes doing the same in reverse then. At least it was twice as long as you got on a Speedboat ride...

We opted for a 2.5 hour cruise on the newly refurbished Yorkshire Belle to see the seabirds at Bempton Cliffs. This was more like it. We sat on the foredeck, huddled up against the wind, watching the odd seal surface briefly before diving to shout to its mates "No... still cold!". One did a spectacular backflip right next to us, luckily away from the boat - I'm not sure how I'd have reacted to a seal landing on my lap! Then past Flamborough Lighthouse and the commentary started to mention birds, guillemots, kittywakes, gannets and occasionally the odd puffin. I couldn't tell them from guillemots unless you managed to spot the distinctive beak. They are a lot smaller than people think. Perhaps because they look a bit like penguins you expect them to be that sort of size. Anyway, whenever the commentator announced a puffin there was a chorus of "Oh yes! There!" whilst I was looking all over the place, spotting a bird, looking for the beak only to find it was a gull of some sort...

Our time at the cliffs came to an end and we turned round for the trip back. We gave up our spot and went into the enclosed deck where the heady odour of oil and marine fuel started to waft across us. Just out of dry dock, the boat had sprung an oil leak. We made it back to Bridlington and the Yorkshire Belle stayed where it was for the next few days whilst it got sorted out. As I stepped onto the pier a seagull welcomed me back. Well... front actually... "Oh! That's lucky!" called a middle-aged chap. "Yes, this too!" I laughed, nudging him over the edge of the pier. "Make a wish!" I advised just before he hit the water... (Disclaimer: The later part of this paragraph may not be strictly true...)

Monday 5 June 2023. We caught a bus out to Bridlington Old Town and Priory. I'll deal with the Priory in a separate article. Bridlington Old Town turned out to be just the one street. It was Monday. Most of the shops are closed on Monday... Never mind, we reached the end of the road and then crossed a main road upon which we were at the gates to the Priory.

The remaining bits of the Priory survived the Reformation being kept in use as a parish church. This was the Gateway to the Priory that apparently housed a museum. We didn't know that at the time...

Four beautiful white horses were being groomed on the green before the Priory. When we came back out later, a white horse-drawn hearse was standing waiting to be hitched up.

Plein air sketch of the harbour. I did some of the pencil bits in situ but it was numbingly cold. Too cold to sit for more than 30 minutes and I took the photo seen at the top of the page, then did quite a lot in the hotel bar, squinting at the tiny screen of my phone. I finished the last third of the pencilling on our last day. Luckily my original bench was free. Actually they were all free, no-one else was so foolish as to sit in the cold and wind. I did the colour in the bar on the last night.

Bridlington, 2023 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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1930s Photo Album Kettlewell and Burnsall

Today we are having a look at the earliest photos from the 1930s photo album I bought from an antiques store. Today it doesn't really matter that I don't know the family who put the album together, because they don't appear in any of today's selection. I'll make up for it in the next article...

These photos were all taken in two villages along the River Wharfe in Yorkshire. I haven't been to either of these villages myself, that I can remember, so it's as much a journey of discover for me as it is for any of my readers. Anyway we have yet to arrive, for we are simply "near Kettlewell"

In any other year I would have been in the car and off to have a look at these places, no doubt taking a few of my own photos. However, as we currently sit in the Coronavirus lockdown, this isn't possible. I'll look at it as a challenge for happier times. I'll be looking to identify the original location and if it has changed beyond all recognition to take some photographs to illustrate what has happened over the last 90 years.

This is something that hit me only after I had been through the album myself. There are no babies in the family. The youngest child would be around six or seven in 1930 so that even if they were still alive they would be in the second half of their nineties today. The likelihood is that no one shown in the albums still survives. If by any chance one or more of the family's children still survive, I would love to meet them and go through the album with them. Wouldn't that be something?

Now that we are actually in the village itself, I'd be expecting to still be able to view this scene - though perhaps on a slightly more level plane. It is likely this was taken on a Kodak Box Brownie camera. Many cameras of the day had no viewfinder. You simply pointed the camera at the required scene and squinted along the top of it, or the side of it. Plenty of scope for tilting it a little bit. Lots of scope for looking in the wrong direction and missing your intended subject altogether! Anyway, for added interest, just let me point out that this is Kettlewell's Village Hall and it was the location for the WI in the movie Calendar Girls.

St Mary's church Kettlewell is mostly a rebuild of 1882-1885, although the west tower (the tower - there is only the one...) is a survivor of a previous church and dates from 1820. Pevsner wasn't all that interested in it I'm afraid though this approach up the lane to a lych gate looks attractive enough.

And here is the River Wharfe itself. One of Yorkshire's major rivers it flows for 65 miles from its source in Langstrothdale near Beckermonds to its end as it flows into the mighty River Ouse, which at 129 miles - all within a single county - stops the Wharfe from getting above itself. I haven't yet found out when the current bridge at Kettlewell was built. It takes the B6160 road over the river. I doubt it is the same one that the Abbot of Fountains Abbey paid over two shillings to repair in the mid 1400s.

A few miles south of Kettlewell the B6160 touches the River Wharfe again at Burnsall. The album contains just two photographs of Burnsall, so I've tagged them onto the end of this article. The bridge dates from 1609 but what we see today is mostly, or perhaps entirely, of an 1884 restoration after flooding damaged the original.

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