Winter 24/25 Newsletter
All posts

Winter 24/25 Newsletter

Above: Burnby Hall, Pocklington is the former home of Major Percy and Mrs Katherine Stewart, who left it to the people of Pocklington

Very best wishes for 2025.

Apparently it is a perfect square year i.e 45 x 45 = 2025. The last one was 1936 and the next 2116. Does that make it especially important? Well, it will be the year of a decision about the official status of the Wolds, one way or another, but the mathematics is probably irrelevant. The question is: should they be designated or not, and if so, in what way and what reasurances will local people have about their property and way of life? You need to let Natural England know how you feel about it by midnight on 13th January.

Proposals for a new Pocklington museum to house the amazing local archaeological finds is our main feature, with other museum developments.

The latest suggestions for the Trust’s forthcoming events are included, but further suggestions are very welcome.

Pocklington District Heritage Trust – Towards a Permanent Museum

Contributed by Phil Gilbank

Pocklington District Heritage Trust – the local group striving to create a heritage facility in Pocklington – has taken major steps towards realising its independent museum vision. The proposed focus will be ‘Invasion, Migration and; Settlement’, covering the area’s earliest times from the Mesolithic through to Domesday; and revealing the ancient connections between the uplands and lowlands of the western Wolds.

Early in 2024 the trust gained a UK Shared Prosperity Fund grant of £40,800, supported by matched funding from individual trustees. This was quickly followed by East Riding of Yorkshire Council agreeing to transfer Burnby Hall (the hall building, not the adjacent Burnby Hall Gardens visitor attraction), to Pocklington Town Council. The town council who will turn the hall into a community and enterprise hub; with rental space for an independent museum and heritage centre at the heart of its blueprint.

Previous initiatives to establish a Pocklington museum had never come to fruition. But over the past decade, the growing East Yorkshire market town’s (population increase 21% between 2011 and 2021) pre-development archaeology uncovered a host of exceptional finds, some of national importance, generating moves to showcase them in the place where they had been discovered.

Pocklington District Heritage Trust (PDHT) came together in 2016 as an informal group of interested parties, before registering as a charitable trust in 2020. Burnby Hall was always the preferred museum venue, but protracted discussions, plus the pandemic, meant PDHT had to be patient until now, channelling its energies into research, information gathering, talks and events.

Two major housing developments, on Burnby Lane and The Mile, produced stunning archaeology. Burnby Lane unearthed a mid-Iron Age cemetery, interspaced with some early Anglo-Saxon burials, and containing a thousand grave goods. On the other side of town, The Mile produced a rare mid- Anglian Grubenhaus settlement site, with nearby earlier remains.

Both excavations gave up remarkable Iron Age chariot burials. In 2016 a chariot with its two horses attached, was found under the roadside verge in Burnby Lane, the first such discovery since Arras in 1816. The 2019 Mile discovery was even more spectacular – chariot and accompanying horses entombed upright, with the charioteer laid on an elaborate bronze shield, described as ‘the most important British Celtic art object of the millennium.’

PDHT set out with no premises or collection; but discussions about the artefacts with both the developers and East Riding Museums Service encouraged its progress. Trustees have also built positive connections with local farmers, metal detectorists and heritage professionals, seeing them pinpoint an array of further ancient finds from Pocklington and surrounding villages.

The Pocklington district provides plenty of material, with evidence from ten thousand years of continuous local settlement. In addition to the Iron Age cemetery and Anglo-Saxon community; a host of ancient remains and locations have been found within five miles of Pocklington, including Mesolithic microliths; a Neolithic hengiform plus dozens of stone tools; Bronze and Iron Age barrows and burials; Iron Age roundhouse and hillfort cropmarks, routeways and earthworks; Roman fort, temple, villas and roads; and Anglo-Saxon and Viking settlement sites. Adding to the excavation finds and archives; the trust has been able to identify and acquire a wide range of objects, from Neolithic stone axes to Roman figurines, and rare Iron Age jewellery to Viking bearded axes.

The story of the area’s ancient history is not restricted to artefacts and landscape features. Pocklington and district archaeology has prompted much post excavation research, some on-going, which enhances our understanding of the actions and abilities of early peoples in East Yorkshire.

Burials from the Pocklington were part of an international research project investigating prehistoric migration patterns. Results indicated that East Yorkshire has a different DNA profile to the rest of Britain; mirroring its well-documented distinctive practices, such as square barrow and chariot burials – of the 30 Iron Age chariot remains discovered nationally, 27 have been found in eastern Yorkshire – and similarities to the customs of northern France.

Aerial photography has enabled the mapping of a network of later pre-historic features revealed as cropmarks across the Pocklington district. These include lines of enclosures alongside trackways or droveways designed for the movement of people and animals; many connecting the uplands of the Wolds with the lowlands of the Vale of York below.

Of particular interest are the systems of linear earthworks or entrenchments, with Huggate Dykes perhaps the best example. These probably appeared at the same time and may be related to hillforts such as Grimthorpe and Kiplingcotes. The multi-period hilltop site at Nunburnholme Wold was connected to the Kiplingcotes hillfort by a valley, along which stock that grazed on the chalk grasslands could be driven. During the later Bronze Age and Iron Age the site was a large ovoid space, surrounded by enclosures and approached by routeways leading up from lower terrain. Grimthorpe hillfort overlooks extensive springs and pasture with trackways down to the plain and ings below.

These close connections between East Yorkshire’s uplands and lowlands have been supplemented by further investigation of the Pocklington burials, revealing that several individuals spent different parts of their lives on the gravel soils around Pocklington, and up on the chalk of the Wetwang neighbourhood.

DNA analysis of The Mile’s charioteer indicates that he was born and raised at Pocklington, spent his middle years around Wetwang, and returned to Pocklington in later life. It is thought that one of the Wetwang chariot females began her life near Pocklington before moving up into the Wolds; while comparisons of a brother and sister from Burnby Lane show that both started out at Pocklington, the female staying local while the male sibling migrated into the Wolds in his teens. Back to PDHT creating a Pocklington district museum and heritage centre. Completion of Burnby Hall’s transfer is imminent, meaning fund raising can finally get underway. The UK SPF award is aimed at producing a stepping stone to a permanent facility, displaying information and artefacts at events around the district, plus fashioning replicas of some key items, including a spectacular reproduction of a shield using Iron Age techniques.

At the time of the SPF grant announcement, PDHT vice-chair Sue Lang said: “We are delighted to have secured this grant to support the creation of a travelling museum. The substantial award will not only give us a stand-alone display that we can use in a range of local venues, but will also be vital in testing out how best to fit out a permanent museum. The travelling museum uses digital visualisations as well as real objects to inspire community learning and create future projects to uncover the area’s past. We are excited about how this can be developed by involving local people and our wider audiences”.

PDHT Trustee, Dr Peter Halkon, who has spent many years researching the region’s prehistoric and Roman landscape added: “These welcome developments mean that at last this area of East Yorkshire will be able to showcase its rich and remarkable archaeology”.

The ‘Travelling Museum’ arrived in late October, just in time for PDHT’s annual heritage festival. It has already been to several local groups, and PDHT members will continue to take it to events, schools and organisations by request. For more information, or to offer support to the Pocklington project, contact can be made with the trust through its website, pocklingtondistrictheritagetrust.org, or by emailing: pocklingtonheritage@gmail.com.

The refurbished Champney Treasure House

The Panic by Henry William Banks R.A.

The Panic by Henry William Banks R.A.

Beverley Treasure House Becomes ‘The Champney Treasure House’

The East Riding’s newly renovated cultural centre reopened to the public in December with a revamped library, art gallery, museum, immersive sensory room, archives, tourist information centre, café, and registrar’s service connecting directly with newly landscaped public gardens. The new Champney Room is a multi-use activity space to house, for example, workshops and author events.

Why the new name? In 1902 John Edward Champney, a local businessman offered to fund a building to house a public library, museum and art gallery. William Spencer donated funds to the venture, buying the plot of land where the Edwardian building stands today. John Champney donated further funds for extensions in 1928.

The latest £3.3 million scheme aimed to create a more welcoming cultural destination for the East Riding, as well as the modernisation of some services and facilities and improving accessibility. The transformation centralised more cultural services from around Beverley into the improved space to enhance the access to information.

John Champney gave this enormous oil painting (2.3m high by 4.8m wide) to the gallery. Painted by Henry William Banks R.A. (1833 – 1914), it has been described as the greatest picture of cattle anywhere. Another, more peaceful (and smaller) painting, by the same artist, possibly of the same herd of cattle, is in the Sheffield art gallery.

The Hessle Whiting Mill

The mill is open on Thursdays and Fridays April – September.

It was used for crushing chalk from the quarry that is now the Humber Bridge Country Park (Locally known as Little Switzerland). Inside it has been newly renovated with information about what whiting was used for, the milling process and the people who worked there.

The Country Park is a designated Local Nature Reserve open all year round. There is a Chalk Walk heritage trail with information about the natural, industrial and social history of the site.

Sewerby Hall house and gardens

The house is a Grade I listed building. The Georgian core of the house was built 1714-1720 by John Greame with later additions in the early 1800s; Sewerby is a tour through architectural history.

A total restoration in 2013-2014 recreates an Edwardian Country house, circa 1910. The rooms are furnished with impressive pieces from important collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum. One area is devoted to memorabilia of the great Hull Born aviator, Amy Johnson, and the 90th anniversary (2020) of her solo flight to Australia. Visits to the gardens are now enhanced with new mobile apps.

The proposed Yorkshire Wolds Natural Landscape Area

The 1945 John Dower Report originally suggested Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs) as a second tier of beautiful landscapes outside National Parks, but considered to be of national significance and worthy of protection through conservation and enhancement. They would not be as large or as wild as National Parks and would not have their own independent legal planning powers. Their secondary aims would be ‘quiet enjoyment of the countryside’ and ‘having regard for the interests of those who live and work there’. This is the designation that the YWHT has been seeking for the Yorkshire Wolds since 1991.

Near Weedly Springs

Beautiful wooded valleys south of Market Weighton are exampless of parts of the Wolds that have not been included.

Since the Dower report it is fair to say that, due to all sorts of factors, such as relative affluence, joining Europe, environmental awareness and climate change, leaving Europe and international unease, have changed the perceptions of the United Kingdom countryside from a priority of home-produced food (where growing conditions are favourable) with recreation in delegated areas and nature an enjoyable accident, to a place of multiple, often conflicting demands. Think: food and wildlife, access and rural crime, landscape protection and housing needs.

In June 2021 Natural England (the Government’s advisory body for the natural environment) announced that it was considering adding The Yorkshire Wolds to the 33 regions (15%) of England designated as ‘Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty’ (AONBs) - soon to be renamed National Landscapes. Already included are the neighbouring ‘wooded hills and valleys’ of the Howardian Hills designated in 1987 and the ‘open skies and long views’ of the Lincolnshire Wolds designated in 1973.

Successive governments have progressively changed the priorities of AONBs, so that in the thirty odd years since the YWHT was formed, support for AONB status for the Wolds is probably not as wholehearted as it once was. You may consider that features like ‘unspoiltness’, ‘naturalness’, and ‘tranquillity’ are uncomfortable bedfellows with ‘access’ and ‘popularity’, but isn’t this true of any attractive area? We can probably think of many places at home and abroad where agreeable sites have been spoilt by their popularity, and where land owners have become unpaid playground stewards.

The expansive rolling farmlands of the Wolds shaped by, as well as shaping, the appearance of the land and the life of its communities are well regarded highly innovative working agricultural landscapes which have evolved over many hundreds of years by the activities of generations of farmers. The long term interdependence between environment and livelihood: a conviction that food production is the raison d’etre, coupled with an appreciation that wildlife and landscape are essential ingredients that make for a good working environment does induce a feeling of self-appointment as caretaker as well as food producer. A role accepted with justifiable pride as a rule – but is it fair to expect it without question? What about that farmer who may not have made a profit in the last three years contemplating a storm lashed crop or the cost of removal of a pile of illegally dumped asbestos sheeting?

Existing AONBs are good on local consultation, in offering advice for grants and encouragement in the participation of volunteer groups, and on information and explanation for visitors. These are essential to foster understanding and respect, even pride, for their designated area and all the normal necessary economic activities that keep it viable and inspiring.

Settlements with untapped facilities may find opportunities for innovation such as, for example, a lifeline to a failing pub or village store, the rehabilitation of former small scale quarrying sites and awkward slopes as nature reserves, disused railway lines and green lanes for long distance trails, novel farm diversification schemes and the refurbishment of inconvenient farm buildings to provide innovative ideas for small businesses and tourism.

YWHT AONB Approximate boundary

Possibly only half of the Wolds is being considered for inclusion. The high Wold ‘maritime’ farmland backdrop to Flamborough Head, the Great Wold Valley, all the Wolds south of Market Weighton and the Wold margins east and west are omitted. The areas marked 343h, 511c and 572o on the soil map above are all chalk soils.

A number of questions have been raised: the validity of reasons for missing out parts and the lack of boundary continuity, the possible low priority given to historic culture, the potential upsides and downsides for locals and visitors, planning adequate sites to diffuse visitor numbers. Implied may be requirements for safeguards, security, way marking and maintenance, the concern of further layers of bureaucracy and the lack of acknowledgement for the bygone scene shapers, for local pride, expertise and goodwill, and recognition of the need to support home produced food and forestry products. The simplest way to decide the AONB’s boundaries is to designate whatever local people have always thought of as the Wolds, stretching from Filey beach to the Humber foreshore, and just skirt round a few intruding detractors along the way, and, very importantly – encouragement and support for a thriving local economy.

This was the basis of our response to the consultation document.

First Event For 2025

In a departure from the regular pattern of events for the year, we start, not with the AGM in mid March, but with a walk and talk on 11th February at Londesborough. You will soon be hearing about details of five other very interesting sounding events that Susan Stephenson has been busy finalising for the the rest of the year.

Opinions expressed in these articles are those of the authors and may not neccessarily exactly reflect the Trust’s concensus views. Readers’ comments will be gratefully accepted and considered for future inclusion.