Yorkshire Vales and Wolds

by Gordon Home

The village of Bempton has, however, contrived to maintain itself in its bleak situation, although it is less than two miles from the huge perpendicular cliffs where the Wolds drop into the sea. The cottages have a snug and eminently cheerful look, with their much-weathered tiles and white and ochre coloured walls. From their midst rises the low square tower of the church, and if it ever had a spire or pinnacles in the past, it has none now; for either the north-easterly gales blew them into the sea long ago, or else the people were wise enough never to put such obstructions in the way of the winter blasts. Even the ricks are put close to the cottages for shelter, and although the day seemed warm, with a cool wind, when we left Malton, the temperature seems to have gone down many degrees on this exposed corner of the chalk tableland.

Turning southwards, we get a great view over the low shore of Holderness, curving away into the haze hanging over the ocean, with Bridlington down below, raising to the sky the pair of towers at the west end of its priory—one short and plain, and the other tall and richly ornamented with pinnacles. Going through the streets of sober red houses of the old town, we come at length into a shallow green valley, where the curious Gypsy Race flows intermittently along the fertile bottom. The afternoon sunshine floods the pleasant landscape with a genial glow, and throws long blue shadows under the trees of the park surrounding Boynton Hall, the seat of the Stricklands. The family has been connected with the village for several centuries, and some of their richly-painted and gilded monuments can be seen in the church. One of these is to Sir William Strickland, Bart., and another to Lady Strickland, his wife, who was a sister of Sir Hugh Cholmley, the gallant but unfortunate defender of Scarborough Castle during the Civil War. In his memoirs Sir Hugh often refers to visits paid him by ‘my sister Strickland.’

After passing Thorpe Hall the road goes up to the breezy spot, commanding wide views, where the little church of Rudstone stands conspicuously by the side of an enormous monolith. Although the church tower is Norman, it would appear to be a recent arrival on the scene in comparison with the stone. Antiquaries are in fairly general agreement that huge standing stones of this type belong to some very remote period, and also that they are ‘associated with sepulchral purposes’; and the fact that they are usually found in churchyards would suggest that they were regarded with a traditional veneration. The stone is 25 feet 4 inches high, and from a statement made in 1769 by a Mr. Willan, we are led to believe that its depth underground is equal to its height above, ‘as appeared from an experiment made by the late Sir William Strickland.’ It is not known whether this ‘experiment’ consisted in digging down to the lowest extremity of the stone; the language seems to suggest otherwise, and the total length of the stone must remain hypothetical until such operations take place. The rustics of the locality incline towards a sensational depth, for, evidently based on the stories of the half-forgotten squire’s digging, they say that they have heard tell how that when an attempt was made to find how far down the stone went, those who were digging found that it was impossible to get to the bottom, and gave it up as a hopeless task. And thus you may find a group of peasants in the churchyard on fine Sunday evenings staring hard at the furrowed surface of the monolith, and thinking, Heaven knows what, of the profound regions from which their stone springs. The interior of the church is remarkable for its fine modern organ, placed there by the owner of Thorpe Hall, who is also the organist. To find the requisite space the instrument had to be placed at the west end of the nave, but it is controlled from the chancel, the necessary motive power being generated in a small building in the churchyard. The present generation of Rudstonians should not find themselves dull when they are given such excellent music and have a subject for so much profound meditation as the stone.

The road past the church drops steeply down into the pretty village, and, turning northwards, takes us to the bend of the valley, where North Burton lies, which we passed earlier in the day; so we go to the left, and find ourselves at Kilham, a fair-sized village on the edge of the chalk hills. Like Rudstone and a dozen places in its neighbourhood, Kilham is situated in a district of extraordinary interest to the archæologist, the prehistoric discoveries being exceedingly numerous. Chariot burials of the Early Iron Age have been discovered here, as well as large numbers of Neolithic implements. There is a beautiful Norman doorway in the nave of the church, ornamented with chevron mouldings in a lavish fashion. Far more interesting than this, however, are the fonts in the two villages of Cottam and Cowlam, lying close together, although separated by a thinly-wooded hollow, about five miles to the west. Cottam Church and the farm adjoining it are all that now exists of what must once have been an extensive village. It is, indeed, no easy matter to find the place, the church being small and inconspicuous, and the roads pass it by in total indifference.

We come to a gate by a cottage, isolated in a great space of corn and root crops, and find it leads down to the big farm of Cottam. A little beyond it appears a small red brick building of recent date, showing all the signs of having been locked up and deserted years ago. This is not the case, however, for it is still in use, although for what other purpose than as a private chapel for the farmer and his family I can scarcely imagine. In this depressing little building we find a Late Norman font of cylindrical form, covered with the wonderfully crude carvings of that period. There are six subjects, the most remarkable being the huge dragon with a long curly tail in the act of swallowing St. Margaret, whose skirts and feet are shown inside the capacious jaws, while the head is beginning to appear somewhere behind the dragon’s neck. To the right is shown a gruesome representation of the martyrdom of St. Lawrence, and then follow Adam and Eve by the Tree of Life (a twisted piece of foliage), the martyrdom of St. Andrew, and what seems to be another dragon.

On each side of the bridle-road by the church you can trace without the least difficulty the ground-plan of many houses under the short turf. The early writers do not mention Cottam, and so far I have come upon no explanation for the wiping out of this village. Possibly its extinction was due to the Black Death in 1349. Mr. Cole of Wetwang thinks it significant that there were three vicars of his church (five miles to the south-west) between 1349 and 1352.

It is about four miles by road to Cowlam, although the two churches are only about a mile and a half apart; and when Cowlam is reached there is not much more in the way of a village than at Cottam. The only way to the church from the road is through an enormous stack-yard, speaking eloquently of the large crops produced on the farm. As in the other instance, a search has to be made for the key, entailing much perambulation of the farm.

At length the door is opened, and the splendid font at once arrests the eye. More noticeable than anything else in the series of carvings are the figures of two men wrestling, similar to those on the font from the village of Hutton Cranswick, now preserved in York Museum. The two figures are shown bending forwards, each with his hands clasped round the waist of the other, and each with a foot thrown forward to trip the other, after the manner of the Westmorland wrestlers to be seen at the Grasmere sports. It seems to me scarcely possible to doubt that the subject represented is Jacob wrestling with the man at Penuel. Although the Bible account plainly indicates that Jacob struggled with some God-like power, yet the actual words used are: ‘And Jacob was left alone. And there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day,’ and the additional piece of information describing how the patriarch’s thigh was put out of joint would be sufficient to prompt the Norman craftsman to give the figure the ordinary form of a man. The carving to the right shows the Temptation of Adam and Eve, the ‘general father of us all’ being placed on the opposite side of the tree to the position given to him at Cottam. Then follow the Massacre of the Innocents—an ambitious subject; the Visit of the Magi, Mary being shown with the child on her knee; and a Bishop holding a crozier in his left hand. The period of this elaborate work would appear to be Late Norman.

At Sledmere, the adjoining village, everything has a well-cared-for and reposeful aspect. Its position in a shallow depression has made it possible for trees to grow, so that we find the road overhung by a green canopy in remarkable contrast to the usual bleakness of the Wolds. The park surrounding Sir Tatton Sykes’ house is well wooded, owing to much planting on what were bare slopes not very many years ago, and in the autumn the orange and red colours of the beeches and the brown carpets beneath them are so beautiful that the scenery has no touch of sadness even in November.

The village well is dignified with a domed roof raised on tall columns, put up about seventy years ago by the previous Sir Tatton to the memory of his father, Sir Christopher Sykes; the inscription telling how much the Wolds were transformed through his energy ‘in building, planting, and enclosing,’ from a bleak and barren tract of country into what is now considered one of the most productive and best-cultivated districts of Yorkshire. The late Sir Tatton Sykes was the sort of man that Yorkshire folk come near to worshipping. He was of that hearty, genial, conservative type that filled the hearts of the farmers with pride. On market days all over the Riding one of the always fresh subjects of conversation was how Sir Tatton was looking. A great pillar put up to his memory by the road leading to Garton can be seen over half Holderness. So great was the conservatism of this remarkable squire that years after the advent of railways he continued to make his journey to Epsom, for the Derby, on horseback.