Yorkshire Interlude – Hornsea – 2008

Yorkshire Interlude – Hornsea: On Saturday 12th July 2008 when we were staying for a few days in Hull with an old friend we took a bus to the Yorkshire coast at Hornsea for the day.

Yorkshire Interlude - Hornsea

I’d first visited Hornsea, a small coastal resort, back in 1965 when I made my first visit to the Hull home of my future parents-in-law, but my wife’s memories of it go back further.

Yorkshire Interlude - Hornsea

Until Beeching swung his axe there were trains from Hull to two seaside towns, Hornsea and Withernsea which stopped at her local station, Botanic Gardens, a quarter of an hour’s walk from her home. People would often go to them for an outing, for a day or even an evening, and many who lived in these towns would commute to work in Hull.

Yorkshire Interlude - Hornsea

My wife’s family took their annual holiday most years with a week in Hornsea, staying in a cottage that one of her great-aunts had bought for £25 after it had been condemned for demolition in the near future. I think it was more than 25 years later that it actually came down – and the site is now just a small garden on the main street, a few minutes walk from the seafront.

Yorkshire Interlude - Hornsea

Most times when we go to Hull now – not as often as we used to as most of those we knew there are now dead or have moved away – we take a bus to Hornsea. What used to be around 40 minutes on the train now takes around twice as long on the buses, though at least it is now free for those of us with bus passes. And the old railway line is now part of a long-distance footpath. Perhaps we will visit again this summer.

We’ve also stayed there, in a holiday cottage in the town centre and a couple of times for a few days at a hotel on the seafront there, where we’ve enjoyed some remarkable sunrises over the wide expanse of the North Sea – as well as some battering storms.

But in 2008 we were staying in one of the finest houses in Hull, West Garth, (more here) then owned by an old friend – an ‘Arts & Crafts’ house which gets a short mention in the guide to Hull’s architecture. It had been one of our friend’s childhood homes and after some years of retirement he bought the property. Various ‘improvements’ had been made which meant it had been denied listing and he spent considerable time and money in restoring it to its original state but sadly died before he completed the job.

The weather wasn’t too good, with some heavy showers, but this did mean that we had the town almost to ourselves, as most of those who would normally have come for a day out at the seaside in July stayed home.

We visited Hornsea Mere, a large freshwater lake at the centre of the town, and a shower gave us a good reason to go into its café before we walked down to the seafront. The sea looked cold and uninviting and for once Linda didn’t paddle.

Then along to another café at the Floral Hall where the sun came out briefly after we had taken shelter there and on the the large park, Hall Garth before it was time to get the bus back into Hull.

This time we took the slower route back via Beverley, getting off in Hull on Beverley Road where I took a picture of Bethnal Green, here just a short terrace of houses, before returning to our friends house to cook dinner.

Despite the weather we had enjoyed a good day.

But it wasn’t a good day to have afternoon tea on the south-facing loggia. You can see many more pictures and some captions from our day at Hornsea on My London Diary.


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Epiphany Rising Against King

Epiphany Rising Against King: On Monday 7 January 1660 (1661 by our modern calendar – New Year back then was the 25th March) Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary “This morning, news was brought to me to my bedside, that there had been a great stir in the City this night by the Fanatiques, who had been up and killed six or seven men, but all are fled. My Lord Mayor and the whole City had been in arms, above 40,000.”

Epiphany Rising Against King

The Fanatiques – a term used to describe the Fifth Monarches (and other nonconformists) believed that the killing of King Charles in 1649 had brought to an end of the last of the four kingdoms mentions in the biblical Book of Daniel – considered as the end of the Empire of Rome (before that had come Babylon, Persia and the Greeks – though there were many other interpretations) and that the time was near for the second coming and the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth. Their uprising was against the re-establishment of monarchy in 1660.

Epiphany Rising Against King

Led by preacher and cooper Thomas Venner they marched from a religious meeting in Swan Alley to take forcibly the keys to St Pauls Cathedral which they then occupied for some hours. Here the band of around 50 men defeated a much larger body of troops sent to capture them, but then failed to decide what to do next, and went out into the woods at Kenwood north of London. Three days later on 9th January they came back to the City and first forced the soldiers sent to stop them to retreat but were finally defeated by a much larger body of soldiers. Twenty-six of them were killed and twenty soldiers also died.

Epiphany Rising Against King

Venner and around 50 others were arrested and tried. Venner was hanged, drawn and quartered on 19 January 1661. His head and those of 12 others were then displayed on London Bridge.

Epiphany Rising Against King

Pepys has a longer entry in his diary for the 9th January about the insurrection – and on seeing everyone else carrying arms he went back home “and got my sword and pistol, which, however, I had no powder to charge” but after taking a walk into the city he “went home and sat, it being office day, till noon.” Later he was persuaded to go out, but then went home and played his lute then went to bed “there being strict guards all night in the City, though most of the enemies, they say, are killed or taken.”

In January 2013, Ian Bone and Class War collaborated with film-maker Suzy Gillett to film a re-enactment of the events of 1661, including a number of speeches and performances about the original events before setting off behind a banner made for the occasion led by a young woman playing the role of Baptist visionary prophet Anna Trapnel, a Fifth Monarchist best known for her 1653 tract ‘The cry of a stone” which recorded her speaking in a trance in Whitehall at great length, in particular berating Oliver Cromwell who many felt was by then setting up a new monarchy. In it she said “the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus is at hand, all the Monarchies of this world are going down the hill: Now is a time that thine should look off from the fethings, and lift up their head, for their Redemption draws near.”

You can read an account of what happened in 2013 on My London Diary at Epiphany Rising Against King or another account by another of those taking part, Paul Brad, also illustrated by my photographs.


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