Manor Farm, Woodmansey, East Riding of Yorkshire

Our last day was spent out and about beyond the urban confines of Hull and Beverley, a good way to wind our time up in Humberside and the East Riding, before we move on tomorrow. The weather continued fine and warm and any fault with the day could only be our own.

Sunday routine was followed, national current affairs checked out and a more leisurely breakfast than the previous days, although we still managed to get away soon after 10 am. 

English Heritage Thornton Abbey lies on the southern side of the Humber estuary, twenty two miles away by road.  While it sports a fabulously impressive gatehouse, the rest of the property is little more than ruins; it does not warrant a full day’s attention hence I had a few things lined up for the rest of the day.

Thornton was founded in 1139 by William of Aumale, one of several monasteries he established or patronized in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, and it became one of the largest and richest Augustinian houses in England. 

With the Humber estuary a busy trade route in the Middle Ages, most of the abbey’s considerable income came from the wool trade. The raw wool was shipped to the Low Countries where it was woven into cloth and sold throughout Europe, English wool prized greatly for its softness.

After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, Henry VIII decided to re-establish the recently suppressed abbey as a college. Very few major abbeys were re-founded in this way and Henry VIII’s decision suggests that he may have been impressed by the site and its building, perhaps even intending to build a residence or hunting lodge for himself here.

Thornton College existed for only seven years, closed in 1547 by Edward VI, who had no interest in the new foundation. The site of the abbey was granted to the Bishop of Lincoln, who apparently adopted Thornton as a family seat. (One wonders what family this may have been!)

In the early 17^th century, a disastrous attempt was made to convert the College into a large and fashionable house. Vincent Skinner was a Member of Parliament with puritan religious sympathies. He bought the former monastic precinct and in about 1610 began to create a new country house on the site. Work began to landscape the area around the house, but nothing much became of the plans, because the new house reputedly collapsed soon after it was completed, destroying the furniture inside. Skinner died in a debtor’s prison in 1617, but the remains of his house and garden can be seen scattered about the site today.

Since then random events have occurred; the monastic buildings were largely demolished to build a tidal sluice at nearby South Ferriby and much later, in the 1850s, the Temperance Society held demonstrations here with over 15,000 people coming from all over Britain. Between 1866 and 1870, the abbey precinct was used each summer as an encampment for the Lincolnshire Rifle Volunteers.

The Earls of Yarborough have owned Thornton Abbey since 1816, however it was placed in the care of the state in 1938 to ensure its protection and to allow public access.

Today the gatehouse dominates the site, rearing up out of the northern Lincolnshire fens like a medieval skyscraper. It is the largest monastic gatehouse in Britain and one of the earliest buildings in the country to use brick on such an impressive scale. The gatehouse stood as a symbol of the abbey’s power, strength and dominance, built between 1377 and 1389, a time of unrest in the surrounding countryside. From the outside it has a fortified appearance with battlements, arrow loops and a slot for portcullis. The walls are a warren of narrow passages containing evidence of latrines and fireplaces, much of which we were able to explore today.

We picnicked outside the entrance before heading back toward the southern end of the Humber Bridge, stopping by at Barton-upon-Humber. Here is another English Heritage property, St Peter’s Church, formerly a parish church before becoming an archaeological site. Its religious role is now fulfilled by nearby St Mary’s; these days with diminishing congregations two parish churches side by side are really an overkill.

The dating of this Anglo-Saxon and medieval church is controversial; English Heritage date the baptistery to the ninth century and the tower nave to the tenth, but whatever the exact truth, it is a very old church.  The earliest graves on the site of the church date from the ninth century and it is these graves, both inside and outside the church that have become the focus of the exhibition.

The first archaeological research was undertaken out in the early 19^th century, mostly of the architectural kind. But the really interesting work was done just last century; Harold Taylor identified the church as an ideal location for an archaeological excavation given that it was uniquely a substantial Saxon church no longer in use for worship. In 1977 after funding was sought, work was begun, the most extensive ever undertaken of a British parish church. The floor was dug up and over 3,000 skeletons were removed from the site, providing what has been described as “an osteological record unparalleled for any small town in England”. Due to the waterlogged conditions, many wooden coffins still survived and other interesting organic material revealed itself. Work was completed in 1985.

Alongside the excavation, extensive repairs to the building were carried out, and in 2007 the skeletons were placed in an on-site ossuary, so as to leave them in consecrated ground close to their original location, while still permitting future study.

Today we were held captive by much information about the finds, including three skeletons on display in the church, as well as an array of grave goods. Questions, interviews and comments about death and subsequent disposal of the body are considered, absorbed and pondered; it is a fascinating exhibition.

As we were driving out of Barton, we spotted a sign for a viewing platform for the Humber Bridge so made our way from one sign to the next finally arriving at a small country park adjacent to the southern end of the bridge. The Waters’ Edge Country Park and Local Nature Reserve is situated on what was once one of the most contaminated industrial sites in the United Kingdom, the ground saturated with toxic waste from chemical factories. 

Today it was busy with folk who had come to sit on the estuary-side benches and eat their own picnic lunches, walk their dogs or simply ride their bikes; evidence of the past horrors long gone. We did not stay long here, just long enough to take a few photos of the massive bridge and note a few more wondrous facts beyond those gleaned the other day when we first arrived, such as the fact that the centre was designed to swing four metres in high winds and that the journey from Hull to Grimsby on the coast immediately to the south used to be one of 160 miles, but now by bridge is a mere 64 miles.

Back on the road, we crossed to the north and found our way to the forty eight acre Humber Bridge Country Park, opened in 1986 five years after the opening of the bridge. Here one can wander through woods, meadows and around ponds, beneath or above chalk cliffs and on a Sunday with the entire population of Hull, or at least with those who are not dining and drinking at Princes Quay.

There are large interpretative boards about the park to inform the visitors about the flora and fauna, history and geology, most simple enough to capture the imagination of the younger readers. I do like to see the pictures and names of the wildflowers, birds and trees, because they are so easily forgotten by yours truly. Today I was amazed to learn that there are twenty four species of bumblebee here in the United Kingdom!

After spending about an hour wandering about, then rewarding ourselves for the effort with chips and ice-cream, we headed home via the Tesco fuel station, where we topped up ready for our 180 mile journey tomorrow.