ground above the further bank, with the church raising its spire high above its newly-restored nave. Then the wide street of Norton, which is scarcely to be distinguished from Malton, being separated from it only by the river, shuts in the view with its houses of whity-red brick, until their place is taken by hedgerows. To the left stretches the Vale of Pickering, still a little hazy with the remnants of the night’s mist. Straight ahead and to the right the ground rises up, showing a wall chequered with cornfields and root-crops, with long lines of plantations appearing like dark green caterpillars crawling along the horizon.
The first village encountered is Rillington, with a church whose stone spire and the tower it rests upon have the appearance of being copied from Pickering. Inside there is an Early English font, and one of the arcades of the nave belongs to the same period.
Turning southwards a mile or two further on, we pass through the pretty village of Wintringham, and, when the cottages are passed, find the church standing among trees where the road bends, its tower and spire looking much like the one just left behind. The interior is interesting. The pews are all of old panelled oak, unstained, and with acorn knobs at the ends; the floor is entirely covered with glazed red tiles. The late Norman chancel, the plain circular font of the same period, and the massive altar-slab in the chapel, enclosed by wooden screens on the north side, are the most notable features. Under the tower—a position in churches where many interesting objects are often hidden up by curtains and woodwork—you find a quaint list of rules and fines for the bell-ringers, dating from nearly two centuries ago. Coming again into the sunny churchyard, we pass through the shadows cast by the gently moving foliage, and are soon climbing steadily into the smooth undulations of the uplands. At the turning to West Heslerton, a long entrenchment of prehistoric date stretches away on either side for two or three miles. In the seaward direction it goes up to Sherburn Wold, where you find an early camp, and where bronze daggers and celts have been discovered. At a meeting of four roads a little further on, we come to the head of the valley, appearing in the background of the illustration given here; and going to the east we reach Helperthorpe, one of the Wold villages adorned with a new church in the Decorated style. The village gained this ornament through the generosity of the present Sir Tatton Sykes, of Sledmere, whose enthusiasm for church building is not confined to one place. In his own park at Sledmere, four miles to the south, at West Lutton, East Heslerton, and Wansford you may see other examples of modern church building, in which the architect has not been hampered by having to produce a certain accommodation at a minimum cost. And thus in these villages the fact of possessing a modern church does not detract from their charm; instead of doing so, the pilgrim in search of ecclesiastical interest finds much to draw him to them.
As a contrast to Helperthorpe, the adjoining hamlet of Weaverthorpe has a church of very early Norman or possibly Saxon date, and an inscribed Saxon stone a century earlier than the one at Kirkdale, near Kirby Moorside. The inscription is on a sundial over the south porch in both churches; but while that of Kirkdale is quite complete and perfect, this one has words missing at the beginning and end. Haigh suggests that the half-destroyed words should read: ‘LIT OSCETVLI ARCHIEPISCOPI.’ Then, without any doubt, comes: ‘✠ IN: HONORE: SCE: ANDREAE APOSTOLI: HEREBERTUS WINTONIE · HOC MONASTERIVM FECIT: IN TEMPORE REGN.’ Here the inscription suddenly stops and leaves us in ignorance as to in whose time the monastery was built. There seems little doubt at all that Father Haigh’s suggested completion of the sentence is correct, making it read: ‘IN TEMPORE REGN[ALDI REGIS SECUNDI],’ which would have just filled a complete line.
The coins of Regnald II. of Northumbria bear Christian devices, and it is known that he was confirmed in 942, while his predecessor of that name appears to have been a pagan. If the restoration of the first words of the inscription are correct, the stone cannot be placed earlier than the year 952 (Dr. Stubbs says 958), when Oscetul succeeded Wulstan to the See of York. However, even in a neighbourhood so replete with antiquities this is sufficiently far back in the age of the Vikings to be of thrilling interest, for you must travel far to find another village church with an inscription carved nearly a thousand years ago, at a time when the English nation was still receiving its infusion of Scandinavian strength.
The arch of the tower and the door below the sundial have the narrowness and rudeness suggesting the pre-Norman age, but more than this it is unwise to say.
Not far from the village there are double entrenchments and tumuli, and many prehistoric remains have been brought to light. Among the Neolithic and bronze implements, a stag’s-horn pick was found, and in a barrow, where a skeleton of a young person buried in a contracted position was unearthed, a jet necklace consisting of 122 beads and a pendant was discovered.
And so we go on through the wide sunny valley, watching the shadows sweep across the fields, where often the soil is so thin that the ground is more white than brown, scanning the horizon for tumuli, and taking note of the different characteristics of each village. Not long ago the houses, even in the small towns, were thatched, and even now there are hamlets still cosy and picturesque under their mouse-coloured roofs; but in most instances you see a transition state of tiles gradually ousting the inflammable but beautiful thatch. The tiles all through the Wolds are of the curved pattern, and though cheerful in the brilliance of their colour, and unspeakably preferable to thin blue slates, they do not seem to weather or gather moss and rich colouring in the same manner as the usual flat tile of the southern counties.
We turn aside to look at the rudely carved Norman tympanum over the church door at Wold Newton, and then go up to Thwing, on the rising ground to the south, where we may see what Mr. Joseph Morris claims to be the only other Norman tympanum in the East Riding. A cottage is pointed out as the birthplace of Archbishop Lamplugh, who held the See of York from 1688 to 1691. He was of humble parentage, and it is said that he would often pause in conversation to slap his legs and say, ‘Just fancy me being Archbishop of York!’ The name of the village is derived from the Norse word Thing, meaning an assembly.
Keeping on towards the sea, we climb up out of the valley, and passing Argam Dike and Grindale, come out upon a vast gently undulating plateau with scarcely a tree to be seen in any direction. A few farms are dotted here and there over the landscape, and towards Filey we can see a windmill; but beyond these it seems as though the fierce winds that assail the promontory of Flamborough had blown away everything that was raised more than a few feet above the furrows. The hedges, tired of being buffetted, have given up the struggle and become flattened out to the south-west, and the few trees that have kept themselves alive are thin and half-starved.