Beverley Minster: compare and contrast

It's not often you get the chance to compare and contrast with these Daily City Photo blogs. Today you can compare the West Wing of Beverley Minster with the fine West Wing of York Minster.
York and Beverley have an ancient history of mercantile competition; the merchants of York eventually set up a small trading post at mouth of the river Hull just to stymie Beverley's trade. That eventually became a bigger place than either York or Beverley. Today York is a World Heritage site and Beverley has a by-pass.

The Money Pit

At some point after the stinking little port of Hull was granted the right to exist those who lived in the ancient town of Beverley grew tired of having to sail/row slowly down the twisting, meandering mud stream that was (and remains) the river Hull and decided they needed a road to get to the place that was going to take away their trade and their preeminence as a leading town in England. And so the Hull Road came about, straight as can be through the hamlets of Woodmansey, Dunswell and on through the largest village in England Cottingham across the swampy mires of Wyke until running into the Beverley Gate and the delights of what is now Whitefriargate. Down this road came King Charles I and his mates looking for a bed for the night before being told to go sling his hook. Later on to maintain the road, toll booths were put in place on the Beverley-Hull turnpike.

But times changed, the stinking little port grew and grew and became the stinking big town spreading ever outwards and reaching up and swallowing large chunks of Cottingham (its appetite is still not sated and it would swallow the whole and other villages besides if it had its druthers)  and the road is no longer Hull Road but Beverley Road and despite its historical significance no kings would come down here if they'd any sense.
The stretch of Beverley Road running from the town centre up to Cottingham Road is, now how shall I put this without appearing too blunt, a dump. In the thirty eight years I've been here it has always been a dump, a grey depressing dump. Behind it old slum housing with attendant social problems has been cleared and replaced by new slum, sorry social, housing with attendant social problems but the late Georgian/Victorian buildings put up by the expansion of the mid 19th century remain on the road itself. The condition of these buildings varies from maintained to totally neglected as in bombed out by the Germans and still not demolished nearly eighty years later, another building had all its internal walls  taken out (don't ask why) and is in danger of collapse. To add to its woes the area has somehow become a Conservation Area, so nothing can be done without jumping through the extra hoops of planning permission and cost. None of which would matter much if this wasn't one the main roads into the town, a gateway to use Council planning parlance, and it's hardly a delight but in its defense I would say that other roads into the town also produce the urge to turn around, leave and never come back. I know other cities have similar dreary roads, I recall Liverpool's long and winding roads even after more than forty years,  but that is their problem.

Now this has not gone unnoticed by those who claim to run the place. It has been spotted that the place has had economic decline in recent years (recent years? how recent is well over half a century of decline?). The cash strapped Council fresh from putting millions of pounds of paving in parts of the empty town centre put in for some cash from whatever source has the stuff and managed to bag a couple of million to do up the place. They have a plan, and (God help us all) the plan has a name: the Townscape Heritage Scheme. Well they've had this plan for a few years now but nothing visible has shown itself. The plan is to give grants for part of the cost of renovating buildings, put in new railings and boundary walls, remove a few street signs, install heritage lighting and no doubt polish the dog turds on the pavement and so on. I'm sure none of this will do any harm but honestly it's a drop in the vast ocean. And as any fool knows a couple of million can soon be eaten up in a council plan, especially as extra staffing will be needed to get the plan off the ground (ça va sans dire!), and approving the grants is "proving slower than anyone anticipated" (of course it is, this is Parkinson's Law in action). Clearly there is little reason why a private individual would sink good money into this place and even with grants it's becoming difficult to get any progress. So why waste any more public money? Simply knock the crumbly edifices down (it wouldn't take much; one simply fell down just the other year!), scrub it clean and start again with acres of prime development land or greenery if you wish right in the heart of town ... and as this will take an absolute age to do you could invite the king to come have a look.

The weekend in black and white is here.

Two statues

Continuing in the vein of stuff that somehow didn't get posted earlier here are two statues from Beverley Minster. On the left King Æthelstan who, I am informed, came along to Beverley Minster to see the tomb of Saint John of Beverley (shown on the right as a bishop) before going off to kill a few hundred Scots and Danes, which was the style at the time. Both statues are made of lead and painted to match the stone interior, they date from the 18th century. Beverley Minster owes a lot to these two, King Æth. for his "pious munificence" and St J. for his bones which brought in the tourists, erm sorry, pilgrims.

Beverley Beck

Beverley Beck connects Beverley with the River Hull and so on to the rest of the world. The town was a trading post of the Hanseatic League so this little creek would once have had traders from all over northern Europe. Modern housing developments have replaced the old tanneries that lined the beckside. The barge you can see is the Syntan which featured previously here. 

Butcher Row, Beverley

Here's another item on Beverley's Town Trail [ 1 ]. This time it's a representation of an ox carcass in eight feet of two inch thick steel plate. The man responsible for this is Chris Wormald who says he was inspired by Rembrandt's slaughterhouse painting [ 2 ]. It's meant to represent the medieval Beverley Butchers Guild. Needless to say comments in the local paper were less than impressed with this rusting legacy.

Another large bit of a mess

Had a short wander about town for first time in a while and came across the sorry state of the Hull Hole aka the Beverley Gate remains. You'll recall that after a plebiscite the council rearranged the excavation with new seating and so on.  Soon after it reopened the walls, perhaps predictably, became an adventure playground for young and not so young children who were clambering all over even riding bicycles and skateboarding on it. Parents of said children seemingly thinking it was a good idea and parents, as we know, are not allowed to say no any more for fear off being accused of abuse. Naturally the old walls or what's left of them did not take kindly to such misuse and damage was done. So in its infinite wisdom the Council had protective bricks put on top; using lime mortar and the employment of some local college brickwork students. (The Council may have been trying to do this work on the cheap; I couldn't possibly comment). Even as it was being done it was understood that it wouldn't stop idiots (there is no other word) from playing on the walls and so it proved. However the mortar used has also failed and the now the new bricks are falling off as well. And if I'm not mistaken the lime mortar is leaching onto to the ancient bricks making them white and unsightly. The place is now fenced off while yet another bright idea is sought. May I suggest getting in experts who know what they are doing when it comes to repairing ancient monuments not some enthusiastic trainees; oh and stiff fines for anyone climbing on the brickwork.  This is all a bit disappointing and worrying since the Beverley Gate is a scheduled monument of national interest and seems destined to be an even bigger ruin than it already is.

In case you're interested below is an old picture of how the Beverley Gate looked when it was less of a ruin than it is now. What you see above is the left hand base of the gate.

Treasure House

Tucked away and slightly off the usual tourist paths is the East Riding Treasure House on Champney Road, Beverley. It contains the East Riding Archives and Local Studies, Beverley Library, a Museum and Beverley Art Gallery. There is also an observation platform at the top of this tower with views over the town some of which I'll show tomorrow.

Gewgaws

In these times of flailing austerity Beverley clearly has not been overly affected (see this post from two day ago). Money (between £22,000 to £80,000 depending on who you believe) has been found to renovate the Market Cross and the four shields that hang from it have been given a fresh coat of paint. The top two are Queen Anne's and Beverley town's shields. Bottom left is that of Sir Charles Hotham and bottom right is Sir Michael Warton MPs for Beverley who part paid for the cross in 1714. They could afford it; Charles Hotham had inherited vast estates and Michael Warton was reputed to be the richest man in England at the time.

The Hanging Jerkin of Beverley

Another of the items on Beverley's town trail [ 1 ], a hanging jerkin or tunic made of copper. It's placed in a narrow alleyway next to the Beaver pub.  Beverley’s jerkin makers made leather tunics and held their own market between St. Mary’s Church and Saturday Market. There's a little more info about this here.

 

Lairgate

Looks peaceful and quiet in this picture but in reality Lairgate is one of the busiest streets in this medieval town. It forms part of the main route from the Humber Bridge in the south to Driffield in the north, the A164. Heavy traffic winds and grinds its way through the town, through narrow streets, such as Hengate, that are plainly not up to the task. So Beverley is to get a relief road, a southern by-pass which will cut across the green belt between Cottingham and Beverley. It will, of course, only be a matter of time before Beverley expands outwards to this pass-by, but that's what passes for progress these days and if people want to build their homes on a flood plain who is to stop them?

North Bar Without and Within, Beverley

Beverley is an old, old town, much older than Hull. A monastery was founded here in the early 700s AD. It used to have four bars or gates as we would now call them (in those days a gate was a street, still is is some street names, compare with  gata, gade of Swedish and Danish ) protecting it. There is only one bar left, the North Bar. A plaque informs the visitor that the Bar was built in 1409 and cost £96/11d. As it's still there 600 years later I suppose that was a good price.

The top picture shows North Bar Without, on account it's outside the walls of Beverley, the one below shows North Bar Within. I'm sorry to say the Tudor looking half-timbered affair above is a much more modern building than it looks.

Road Works

For the past few months the orange bollards and safety fencing have been up at one of the busiest junctions in town where Beverley Road and Spring Bank meet Ferensway and Freetown Way. The plan is to widen the junction, renew the traffic lights and make bigger islands for pedestrians to cross over. They'll also throw in some so-called pedestrians light controlled push buttons but as these won't actually do anything until the traffic has been stopped by the traffic lights they are really just for show. As with all road works in this town delays are inevitable; last Thursday, for example, I was on the bus into town and got caught in a jam so slow that we made 50 whole yards in ten minutes. In the end I got off and walked. (If you zoom in real close to the centre of the picture my bus is the red and cream one still stuck on Beverley Road ten minutes after I got off it!) The rumour is that this work will be completed ahead of schedule, that'll be a relief and we'll be back to the natural background rate of delays. I expect, though, that the junction will look pretty much the same as it did before which is to say not very pretty at all..

One side of Beverley Beck

Been a while since I've had a walk by Beverley beck. Hasn't changed much.

My plan to cross over at this bridge and come back on the other side was thwarted by Balfour Beatty's  security fencing, something to do with repairs to the bridge.

More weekend reflections here.

Stoneferry Bridge

There's been a crossing at Stoneferry for centuries but the big business guys in Beverley prevented a bridge being built until 1905. They were worried about it blocking the navigation up the river to Beverley. That old bridge simply couldn't cope with the traffic volumes and so it was replaced in 1991 with this dual bascule bridge. It can lift to allow river traffic but there is very little of that nowadays.

Barmston Drain

The Beverley and Barmston drain to give it its full name drains the land between Beverley and Driffield and runs to the west of the river Hull joining it just before the mouth of the river. The pictures here are from the stretch near Sculcotes Lane in Hull. It's pleasant enough now with a tarmac footpath, almost civilised, but when the gas works and electricty power station were operating up to the 1960s the drain was used for cooling the plant and waste hot water was pumped back into the drain making it steaming and polluted. Houses backed on to the drain it was all very Dickensian. Here's Philip Larkin in 1964 having a stroll by the drain while reading one of his more depressing verses.

Now the drain is crystal clear and well stocked with fish and there's abundant wildlife. Of course where there's drains there's rats.

The Creeler

Part of Beverley's history trail this bronze statue of a creeler is at the top end of the beck. Creeler is an old local term for someone who, in medieval times, did the hard work of shifting cargo to and from boats and without which the merchants of Beverley would have been up the beck without a paddle. This was sculpted by Chris Wormald and unveiled in 2010.

Le Quartier Latin

In Beverley there are two market places, Saturday Market and this one Wednesday Market (no prizes for guessing what day the market is held). Until a couple of years ago Wednesday Market was just an ugly little car park for most of the week then it got given a remodelling into a 'continental style' eating place with outdoor tables and so on; you can imagine. I've seen it descibed as "Beverley's very own Latin Quarter" (do try not to smirk). I don't think it's been a successful transformation and I've never seen anyone sitting out enjoying the ambience. At the heart of this sits the Queen's Head which looks old but I am reliably informed it has been modernised.

Whan that April with his showres soote ...

Photo by Margot K Juby

...then longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,...

Er, not quite. This palmer is none other than your man himself on the path to Beverley. There are modern ways of getting from Cottingham to Beverley by car, bus or train journeys of a few minutes duration; this is the old bridle path that winds its way around field edges for three and half miles and, due to dawdling and admiring the view and so on, took over two hours. Even then it was more by accident than design as having got to where yesterday's picture was taken from and seeing the minster in the distance it was a case of returning were as tedious as go o'er. At least we had Zephyrus (with his sweete breeth) on our backs all the way.

Flammengaria

From the 12th century wool was being exported from Beverley and in return traders from Flanders set up home and shop in  the area to the east of the Minster by the beck. The area became known as Flammengaria and later Flemingate. It is quite possibly the oldest street in Beverley. Fast forward a few hundred years and a narrow lane intended for horse drawn or, more likely ox-drawn wagons, is to be a main way-in to the new Flemingate development. There's big stores, a cinema, an hotel, 130 new houses, a brand new college and a 500 space car park. It opens tomorrow so not surprisingly there's a mad rush to get the roadworks finished on time, this picture taken on Friday. Will this old thoroughfare cope with all that extra traffic? I'm saying nothing ...

Supermarket Forces

There was a livestock market in Beverley from the mid 19th century until 2001. At one time it was the biggest pig market in the country (East Yorkshire is big on pigs). Despite this it became unprofitable and Beverley Corporation sold it off. It continued to decline and eventually was closed; the site was cleared and sold to another sort of market, a supermarket.  This plaque commemorates the market and is by the entrance to Tesco's emporium on New Walkergate.