A stormy Christmas Eve

I would like to wish everyone who reads my blog a Happy Christmas and best wishes for 2014. It has been an eventful year and I am looking forward to a peaceful few days, eating roast beef and plum pudding and sitting in front of a log fire eating chocolates.

It was very windy yesterday and one advantage of this is that small branches and twigs fall in my garden, enabling Molly and me to go outside later 'gathering winter fuel'.

On the historical front I have been buying a few old postcards from e bay - it is a good time to do this as many people seem to be too busy with Christmas preparations to keep an eye on the computer! My latest purchases were of pictures of Carlton near Snaith showing flooding around the Bank End area.

I have so many old pictures now that I despair of ever getting them online on my website - but if you ever need an old picture of  this area of East Yorkshire, do ask me if I have one.

 Most people buy copies to illustrate their family history but I have provided images this year for the new Montague Mills factory shop at Goole and most recently for an artist who was designing a book cover and needed a period background image for his heroine [this was a picture of Snaith].

Below is a picture of Coronation Row at Carlton in the snow. It is not  perhaps the sharpest of pictures but as I collect these pictures from a bygone age I have realised that sometimes the picture quality is not the main criterion.

For anyone looking for an old picture of their granny at school, their house, their ship or where their ancestor worked any picture at all is often a bonus.

Coronation Row, Carlton near Snaith

Old photos of Howden

It is  the first day of Advent and the sun is shining brightly. Molly and I have been for a long walk and tramped our way through drifts of fallen leaves. Molly enjoys chasing after the squirrels but she is far too slow to get anywhere near them.  I then tidied up the yard, trimming off some of the dead foliage and emptying hanging baskets.

Earlier in the week I planted some daffodil and crocus bulbs where an old wooden shed stood. I thought the crocus bulbs might have more chance nearer the house as all those I have ever planted elsewhere in the garden have not survived the squirrels. Perhaps I should encourage Molly to run faster!

This has been a good week for Howden. In a previous blog post I mentioned that my friend Ken Deacon and the Howden Civic Society had put in a bid for funding for an R100 airship trail in the town. Well this Tuesday was voting day and Howden won. So the next step is to have the plaques cast so they can be embedded in the pavement.

Yesterday I took into Chappelows' paper shop in the town some mounted photos of local views to sell. Howden  has a fascinating history and is very picturesque. I hope that both local people and tourists might like a souvenir of the town and, as not everyone wants to buy everything from the internet, this is an opportunity for me to showcase and share some of my old pictures.

I am looking forward to the Howden Late Night Opening on Thursday 5th December. There is always a real Christmas atmosphere and this year I do not think that snow ploughs will be needed to clear the Market Place as happened a couple of years ago.

Molly and a hedgehog

I have just come in from walking Molly. The leaves are beautiful this year and as yet it is still mild enough to walk in just a sweatshirt. I understand however that winter is arriving next week. Molly was on her lead as we passed a dead hedgehog on the roadside. A couple of days ago she was not and it took some time to wash off the smell after she rolled delightedly on top of it.

My old pictures often appear in the Goole Times but talking to a friend earlier in the week she asked when the pictures were going to feature somewhere other than Goole. A fair point and I shall try to submit some of the local villages such as Blacktoft, Holme on Spalding Moor,  Rawcliffe and the town of Snaith. I have hundreds of pictures but  am easily distracted by writing when I should be cataloguing!

Some of my most recent acquisitions are pictures of around Drax  - long before it became famous as the site of the giant power station.

This is a view of the Drax Primitive Methodist chapel on the left and the Huntsman Inn a little further down the street.

Dog days

Suddenly it is early August and the garden is beginning to look autumnal. I have just been cutting the grass in the part of the garden where I hang out washing. Every so often my foot went into a soft patch of soil and the lawnmower balked. It is the moles which have returned. I do not really mind them but would prefer them to be elsewhere!

It is still very dry - the duckweed in the pond is brown and clinging to the damp part at the very bottom and when we were digging potatoes yesterday  they were much smaller than normal. Perhaps they would have benefitted from more water - and perhaps some old fashioned 'muck'.

But the apple trees are covered in fruit and the self sown brambles near the shed are soon going to  be ripe enough to be made into pies. I know that strictly speaking the bush is the bramble and the fruit  is the blackberry but as a child we always called them bramble pies and so I continue to do so.

Friends have been helping us convert an old brick workshop into somewhere to store historical objects and pictures. It has been hard work - although my contribution has largely been tea-making and enthusiasm as clutter has been removed, a floor laid and wiring put in to reveal a lovely building which has been long neglected.

Below is a picture of Molly who first appeared on this blog as a small puppy. Now two years old she is a good-natured and fairly obedient companion who likes nothing better than mooching around with us outside and trying to creep onto the settee in the house.

Saltmarshe Hall visit

Since my last blog post I have been on holiday and returned to a garden which looked more like a field.  The grass had grown amazingly and the grasscutter would only chug through it very slowly. As for the vegetables they are temporarily lost in a sea of sow thistle, chickweed and goosegrass. But when I look carefully I think they are growing well.

Molly has been in kennels for the first time and did not like it.  It took her three days to wag her tail properly and accept that she was safely home with her friend Poppy the cat.

Last week I took a group of students and friends to Saltmarshe Hall for a visit. The new owners, the Whyte family, have been there around a year now and were very welcoming.

We were able to look around the formal rooms, dining room, drawing room and library, all accessed off the magnificent hallway with its cantilevered staircase. We then were able to explore part of the former servants' wing and the cellars and the beautiful gardens.

If I am honest I think that the most popular part of the visit was when we looked at the servants' bedrooms, left as they had been probably 60 years ago with the original wallpaper and bedsteads. Maybe it was because most of us felt that our ancestors would have been servants rather than part of the much richer family who lived 'upstairs'.  Shades of Gosford Park perhaps?

Tonight I have tried to deal with two wasps' nests, one in the roof of  the part of the house where I am sitting now typing and one a only few feet away from  the house and near our picnic table. I have sprayed them with a foam bought from our local diy store and await the morning to see whether it has worked.

This bedstead is in the former servants' wing at Saltmarshe Hall

This view shows one of the several cellars on which the hall is built.

Howden book launch - Friday November 23rd

It is a lovely sunny November weekend and I have been out with Molly having a bonfire of hedge clippings and old cardboard boxes. Molly has enjoyed snuffling in the undergrowth in the wood and I have been collecting fallen twigs to bring in to dry. They make good firelighters for both the Rayburn and the front room fire.

I have now fixed a date to launch my book about Howden. I have booked a table in the Shire Hall for Friday 23rd November from 9 am  (there is a market in Howden on Fridays) and am going sit behind it,  sign my books and hopefully meet lots of old friends and make new ones!! There will be an exhibition of old local photos and objects as well as refreshments available.

I am selling my books that day at £10 a copy - the normal price will be £10.50. I hope readers will enjoy it - I have enjoyed writing it. Many people have shared information and photographs with me and although like any author I am always a bit nervous about possible mistakes I am looking forward to sharing what I have written with a wider audience.

It seems appropriate to launch it actually inside the building which is shown on the front cover - see my previous blog post for the front cover picture.

Back cover of my Howden history book 

Molly and the washer and the Howden beadle

This has been a busy week for family history with visits to both the archives at Beverley and the Borthwick Institute at York.

Whilst at Beverley I looked at the Howden vestry minute book  [PE 121/63] which is full of fascinating information about the highways and the poor.

I was interested to read that Howden had a beadle in 1780. Samuel South was chosen in place of Matthew Iveson. He had to provide his own utensils - wheelbarrow, spade, cowl rake, besoms etc and use them to clean the causeys [causeways - which could refer to either streets or footpaths] including St Hellin's Square, Northolmby Causey, Langton's Causey and Pinfold Causey.

A beadle was a parish official with several duties, as mentioned in Oliver Twist, although in Howden one of his major roles seems to have been street cleaning.

Today our quite new Hotpoint washer made a strange whirring noise and came to a halt in the middle of washing a load of clothes. It refused to pump out and we could not open the door. The chances of summoning an engineer to arrive on a Bank Holiday seemed low.

So we read the troubleshooting guide which came with the washer and found there was a filter we could examine at the front of the machine. It said 'a  little water may leak out'. In fact a lot of water poured out all over the floor. Then eventually, after a little more research on the internet, we found that we should check something called the impeller which should rotate freely. It did not.

We could see something caught in it and using a pair of pliers we extracted a small piece of cane. It had been chewed off the log basket near the washer by Molly. How it had got into the washer is a mystery. But the washer returned to life and is now recovered.

We love Molly dearly but since she also recently managed to cut off the power we are waiting, possibly vainly, for her to realise she is no longer a puppy!!

Wressle visit

Members and friends of my WEA local history classes visited Wressle this week. We met at the brick church, built in 1799  to replace the chapel within the castle which had been destroyed by fire in 1796.

We then went on to visit Wressle Castle which is very visible from the Howden/ Selby rail line. What remains of the Percy family's magnificent castle however is now only a fraction of the original. It is on private property and our visit was specially arranged with the owners.

What remains is the south range which contained the hall and lord's tower. The rest was demolished in the mid-seventeenth century on the orders of parliament in case the Royalists occupied it. This was despite the fact that the Percy family were then supporters of Parliament.

The south range survived and was occupied as a farm house until it was destroyed by a fire. We walked around the outside first and I had a good audience of both people and cattle as I talked about the castle.

We then looked inside the castle which is open to the elements - no floors or windows are left and the stonework is badly cracked. But it was still possible to imagine what it had been like when there were over 200 servants and Henry VII visited.

We then enjoyed tea and scones at the farmhouse and were lucky enough to avoid this week's rain.

Wressle Castle around 1905

Not much to say about the rain except that I wish it would stop. Yesterday was a deluge and my garden pond which takes the water from the house roof is over its banks and overflowing into the woodland. Molly has enjoyed jumping in and swimming in it, coming out covered with duckweed.

Country notes

Although we are not quite at the end of February today felt like spring was on the way. I was able to walk Molly without wearing a woolly hat (me not Molly!) and it was still light at half past five. The snowdrops in my wood are carpeting the ground and seem particularly good this year. It is hard to believe that only a few days ago they were covered with snow and frost.

I have a few aconites in flower too but try as I might I cannot get them to spread. I envy the large patches I see in a nearby wood, contrasting so beautifully with the snowdrops.

It is warmer too and the Rayburn, stoked with logs from a dead elm, is keeping the house warm without too much input from the oil boiler. Listening to it going always makes me think that it is like burning money.

Tomorrow I am fetching three new brown hens and hope this time to keep them from the fox. I have plenty of grain for them and they will have no excuse not to lay us lots of eggs.

I have had the trees which fell over winter - two or three - dealt with and logged up although the young men who enthusiastically carried out the work 'accidentally' cut down my lilac tree. I was not happy.

Molly is now asleep in her bed, whimpering as she dreams of who knows what! A dog's life is not a bad one.

East Yorkshire landscape

We are in the news at the moment with features on BBC Countryfile and the opening of David Hockney's new exhibition at the Royal Academy based on the East Yorkshire landscape.

East Yorkshire is described as an undiscovered but beautiful area - those of us who live here already knew that. Much of the coverage too is of the Yorkshire Wolds and not of our flatter and more arable landscape.

Where we live we are dominated by watercourses, much like some areas of Holland. There is the fast-flowing Ouse, the Derwent, the Aire and the Don (although the Don is the Dutch River as it flows through Goole). Also vital is the smaller River Foulness, known locally as the 'Foonah', as well as countless large drains, with their massive clough doors which stop the water running back in at high tide.

The land is rich and fertile and there are some lovely local walks. I walk Molly every morning not far from home. This morning it was both sunny and frosty and a pleasure to watch a big hare running across the frosty field.

The following pictures were taken two days ago and this morning.

New Year's Eve 2011

It is the end of another year and as far as the weather is concerned the contrast with last year could not be greater. It is very mild and I noticed that a lone geranium which I had not lifted in still looks quite healthy.

Molly is peacefully asleep in her bed, having consumed breakfast and also a small shrew-like creature which the cat had left outside the back door. Daffodils are well up and it is tempting to go outside and do some gardening. My three chickens are enjoying pecking for grubs. I am hoping to get some more soon to replace those lost to the fox.

My local history classes resume the week beginning 9th January in Howden, Eastrington and Goole. It will be nice to see everyone again and perhaps welcome new students.

I have enjoyed researching some interesting families this year. It is always rewarding to find that missing link for someone or to trace changing fortunes of a family through the generations.

Many of those for whom I have carried out research have become friends via the medium of email and it is particularly interesting to find out about the lives of those who left the local area and became pioneer settlers in USA, Canada and Australia.

I also have enjoyed finding old pictures for those who are searching for a photo of their ancestor or where they lived. It is frustrating that many of our forebears did not write on the back of their old family photos - but do we?

I have a large collection of  football team pictures from Goole from the 1890s-1920s and these are wonderful as they are mainly all named. If only school pictures had been named too.

Christmas Eve

Today is Christmas Eve, grey, cold and damp but nothing like the Arctic conditions of last year. We have now passed the shortest day (21st December) and when my mother and I used to write Country Notes in the Goole Times we always took pleasure in explaining that from now on the days are 'a cockstride' lighter.

East Yorkshire dialect has many of its roots in country lore and in the language of our Norse ancestors. Words such as 'bairn' (a child) and flitting (moving house) would easily be recognisable to them.

I enjoy listening to such dialect speakers and probably use dialect words myself without knowing. I do remember a visitor asking if a cable was 'wick' and being puzzled until I realised he meant  'was it live?' in the sense that a dog could be 'wick with fleas'!

We are feeding the birds with fat balls, beloved of blue tits and with kitchen scraps. But now we have Molly there is little left. Yesterday she enjoyed much of the rind of a butternut squash.

Tomorrow we shall be going to church at Laxton in the morning - my daughter plays the organ for the service - and then to family for Christmas dinner. I hope all blog readers enjoy their Christmas.

Herons mill

I was pleased to receive this week a letter from Josephine who has, with the help of some people who used to work there, identified nearly all the people on the Herons mill picture I put on my blog a couple of weeks ago. With her permission I have now added the names to the picture. I shall, in the near future put on more pictures in the hope that the people on them can be similarly identified.

It is now December and although nothing like as cold as it was last year it is still cold enough to need the heating on. I have a Rayburn and whilst cleaning it out last week found that one of the fire bars had broken. When I looked more carefully another was very worn and the bar they all rest on was bent. I did try to buy new ones locally but no one had them in stock. The internet can be useful as I ordered them from Wrexham and they arrived in two days. The only downside is that each firebar cost £25!!

Molly, the puppy, is now nearly 5 months old. She is slightly calmer but still chews anything within reach. She enjoys rugs and carpet corners at the moment. On the plus side she is learning basic commands like sit, stay and down. She comes back  fairly well  when I whistle for her but has a tendency to look back and wonder whether she can get away with not coming just yet!

I should go now and take her for a walk.

Saltmarshe - the SS Aire

Today has been a typical dull, drizzly November day. I had hoped to take some pictures in Saltmarshe Park but the light was too poor.

I have recently been looking at photos of when the SS Aire was run aground at Saltmarshe after colliding with the German collier Helene B. Schupp on October 6th 1958. The pictures show the workmen in the park with winches as they tried to recover the ship and stop her breaking her back. It was to no avail and she was eventually destroyed. 


It is still possible to see the marks of the hawsers on one of the oak trees and there are markers on the river bank to show where the ship was aground.


In the garden there are still lots of apples - but everyone around has lots too so it is hard even to give them away. I am hoping to pick up some russets soon as they improve with keeping.


Molly the labrador is now more a small dog than a puppy although she still does not like the dark and chews almost anything she can find. She enjoys pieces of coal from the scuttle and can reduce a piece of stick to chippings in a matter of minutes.

Whitgift ferry, Molly and RIP Norman

This has been a busy week. My book about Goole is now in proof and should be, when I have made the corrections,  printed by the end of October.  I hope I have noticed all the mistakes but there are always some that slip through the net.

On Wednesday night the fox got the chickens. I was a bit late going out to drop the hatch on their hut and when I looked inside the hut was strangely empty. Then by the light of the torch I saw what was left of poor Norman the cockerel lying nearby. The hens I have never seen again. But on Thursday I met a friend in the supermarket and her daughter had a cockerel and two light Sussex hens which she kindly gave me. I am looking after them very carefully.

Today has been sunny and we have been out with the camera taking pictures for a presentation I am giving at the Beverley Treasure house on Thursday 20th October at 6pm. It is about the changing face of Howdenshire and so I needed some pictures of the area as it is today to compare with my old pictures.

This is the Ouse riverbank at Metham where the Whitgift Ferry landed such passengers as John Wesley and Charles I. Molly is being taught to walk on a lead

Molly is queen of the castle

Stanley Oughtibridge of Swinefleet

In the WEA local history class I run in Goole - new members always welcome - we discuss all manner of subjects Goole related. This morning topics included the history of Fisons, once Goole Tillage, the role Lep played in the war assembling military vehicles and Stanley Oughtibridge.

I am not sure how we came to talk of him but he was one of Goole's characters. He was in fact from Swinefleet and began his career looking after lions in a circus. He then spent many years working in the music halls mainly in the north of England.

He was for many years a familiar figure in Goole, usually immaculately dressed and sometimes wearing spats.

This picture of Mr Oughtibridge, taken in 1989, was provided by Gilbert Tawn.

On a different topic Molly the puppy is growing by the day. She is, like most Labradors, keen to eat almost anything including so far a plug off a lamp, a library book cover and any unwary feet. She is not sure whether to chase chickens or run from them but seems to take most new events in her stride. I only wish her day did not start quite so early!!

Book fair and a new puppy

This has been a busy weekend. On Saturday I went to the local history bookfair at Beverley which was held at the Treasure House. I had a stall and met lots of old friends and some new ones. I managed to sell some of my books about Eastrington and Gilberdyke and had a display of some of my old pictures.
Then yesterday we went to fetch Molly, our new puppy. She is almost 9 weeks old and is a black labrador. She is settling in well although does not like being left on her own and  howled last night. Poppy, our cat remains aloof and suspicious. So far she seems to like eating raw apple and playing but has little idea of using the newspapers we have provided!

Here is Molly.