Yorkshire Almanac 2026

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Comment

The last figure is missing, and so is the total, though George Oliver says the latter was £1037 06s. 8d. (Oliver 1829), or about £900K in 2022.

Percy’s funeral sounds positively modern and dull compared with John Aubrey’s reports on low-income Yorkshire two centuries later:

At the funerals in Yorkshire, to this day, they continue the custom of watching and sitting-up all night till the body is interred. In the interim some kneel down and pray (by the corpse), some play at cards, some drink and take tobacco. They have also Mimicall plays and sports, e.g., they choose a simple young fellow to be a judge, then the suppliants (having first blacked their hands by rubbing it under the bottom of the pot), beseech his Lop: [Lordship] and smut all his face. They play likewise at Hott-cockles.

Esse aliquid manes, et subterranea regna,
Et contum, et Stygio ranas in gurgite nigras,
Atque una transire vadum tot millia cymba.
Juvenal, Satyr II.

The belief in Yorkshire was among the vulgar (perhaps is in part still) that after the person’s death the soul went over Whinny-moore, and till about 1616/1624 at the funeral a woman came (like a praefica [professional mourner]) and sang the following song:

This ean night, this ean night,
every night and all:
Fire and fleet [water] and candle light
and Christ receive thy soul.

When thou from hence dost pass away
every night and all
To Whinny-moor [furze moor] thou comst at last
and Christ receive thy silly poor soul.

If ever thou gave either hosen or shun [Scots: hose and shoes]
every night and all
Sit thee down and put them on
and Christ receive thy soul.

But if hosen nor shoon thou never gave nean
every night, etc.:
The Whinnes shall prick thee to the bare bean
and Christ receive thy soul.

From Whinny-moor that thou mayst pass
every night etc.:
To Brig o’ Dread thou comest at last
and Christ etc.:

From Brig of Dread that thou mayest pass
no brader than a thread
every night etc.: To Purgatory fire thou com’st at last
and Christ etc.:

If ever thou gave either milk or drink
every night etc.:
The fire shall never make thee shrink
and Christ etc.:

But if milk nor drink thou never gave nean
every night etc.:
The fire shall burn thee to the bare bene
and Christ receive thy soul.

(Aubrey 1881)

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Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Beverley Minster (7) W/G ·
• Beverley (22) W/G ·
• Clothing (3) W/G ·
• East Riding of Yorkshire (67) W/G ·
• Funeral (25) W/G ·
• Henry Percy, 4th Earl of Northumberland (1) W/G ·
• Henry VII of England (3) W/G ·
• Leconfield (2) W/G ·
• Professional mourning (1) W/G ·
• South Kilvington (6) W/G ·
• Thirsk (14) W/G ·
• Wressle Castle (1) W/G ·
• Wressle (2) W/G ·
• 📌York (165) W/G ·
• Yorkshire rebellion 1489 (1) W/G ·

All tags.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Comment

The last figure is missing, and so is the total, though George Oliver says the latter was £1037 06s. 8d. (Oliver 1829), or about £900K in 2022.

Percy’s funeral sounds positively modern and dull compared with John Aubrey’s reports on low-income Yorkshire two centuries later:

At the funerals in Yorkshire, to this day, they continue the custom of watching and sitting-up all night till the body is interred. In the interim some kneel down and pray (by the corpse), some play at cards, some drink and take tobacco. They have also Mimicall plays and sports, e.g., they choose a simple young fellow to be a judge, then the suppliants (having first blacked their hands by rubbing it under the bottom of the pot), beseech his Lop: [Lordship] and smut all his face. They play likewise at Hott-cockles.

Esse aliquid manes, et subterranea regna,
Et contum, et Stygio ranas in gurgite nigras,
Atque una transire vadum tot millia cymba.
Juvenal, Satyr II.

The belief in Yorkshire was among the vulgar (perhaps is in part still) that after the person’s death the soul went over Whinny-moore, and till about 1616/1624 at the funeral a woman came (like a praefica [professional mourner]) and sang the following song:

This ean night, this ean night,
every night and all:
Fire and fleet [water] and candle light
and Christ receive thy soul.

When thou from hence dost pass away
every night and all
To Whinny-moor [furze moor] thou comst at last
and Christ receive thy silly poor soul.

If ever thou gave either hosen or shun [Scots: hose and shoes]
every night and all
Sit thee down and put them on
and Christ receive thy soul.

But if hosen nor shoon thou never gave nean
every night, etc.:
The Whinnes shall prick thee to the bare bean
and Christ receive thy soul.

From Whinny-moor that thou mayst pass
every night etc.:
To Brig o’ Dread thou comest at last
and Christ etc.:

From Brig of Dread that thou mayest pass
no brader than a thread
every night etc.: To Purgatory fire thou com’st at last
and Christ etc.:

If ever thou gave either milk or drink
every night etc.:
The fire shall never make thee shrink
and Christ etc.:

But if milk nor drink thou never gave nean
every night etc.:
The fire shall burn thee to the bare bene
and Christ receive thy soul.

(Aubrey 1881)

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Similar

7 January 1397: On the longest of the 42 days of his carnivalesque reign, boy-bishop John de Cave of York goes on a 200-mile begging spree

27 July 1822: An inquest at York finds that John Furnel of the Queen’s Regiment of Foot died of flogging and resulting illness

1 July 1840: The opening of the Hull and Selby Railway terminates the threat to Hull’s port from Goole, Scarborough and Bridlington

1 August 1833: At Kelfield (East Riding), Hannah Beedham fails to fulfil her prophecy of her own death

26 July 1802: Dorothy Wordsworth travels with brother William from Scarborough across the Wolds to Beverley and Hull

5 July 1858: The view from the tower of Beverley Minster

12 September 1865: An unexpected gesture from Richard Scurr, watchmaker, at the Thirsk burial of John Pick Allison, solicitor

2 November 1300: In a pause in the Scottish wars, Archbishop Corbridge of York tells John de Cave and Radulf, bailiff of Beverley, to pursue debasers and deserters

25 October 1417: Without prejudice to Crispin and Crispinian, England celebrates a miracle at the tomb of St John of Beverley during the Battle of Agincourt two years ago

17 August 1778: Civil engineers John Smeaton and John Wooler explain how to use the River Hull to flush the dock which has replaced the northwest section of the city walls

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Comment

Smeaton’s scheme did not prosper. John Timperley:

Various schemes had been suggested for cleansing the dock of the mud brought in by the tide; one was by making reservoirs in the fortifications or old town ditches, with the requisite sluices, by means of which the mud was to be scoured out at low water; another by cutting a canal to the Humber, from the west end of the dock, where sluices had been provided, and put down for the purpose, when it was proposed to divert the ebb tide from the river Hull along the dock, and through the sluices and canal into the Humber, and so produce a current sufficient, with a little manual assistance, to carry away the mud. Both of these schemes were however abandoned, and the plan of a horse dredging machine adopted; this work began about four years after the Old dock was completed, and continued until after the opening of the Junction dock. The machine was contained in a square and flat bottomed vessel 61 feet 6 inches long, 22 feet 6 inches wide, and drawing 4 feet water: it at first had only eleven buckets, calculated to work in 14 feet water, in which state it remained till 1814, when two buckets were added so as to work in 17 feet water, and in 1827 a further addition of four buckets was made, giving seventeen altogether, which enabled it to work in the highest spring tides. The machine was attended by three men, and worked by two horses, which did it at first with ease, but since the addition of the last four buckets, the work has been exceedingly hard.

There were generally six mud boats employed in this dock before the Humber dock was made; since which there have been only four, containing, when fully laden, about 180 tons, and usually filled in about six or seven hours; they are then taken down the old harbour and discharged in the Humber at about a hundred fathoms beyond low water mark, after which they are brought back into the dock, sometimes in three or four hours, but generally more. The mud engine has been usually employed seven or eight months in the year, commencing work in April or May.

The quantity of mud raised prior to the opening of the Junction dock, varied from 12,000 to 29,000 tons, and averaged 19,000 tons per annum; except for a few years before the rebuilding of the Old lock, when, from the bad and leaky state of the gates, a greater supply of water was required for the dock, and the average yearly quantity was about 25,000 tons. As the Junction dock, and in part also the Humber dock, are now supplied from this source, a greater quantity of water flows through the Old dock, and the mud removed has of late been about 23,000 tons a year.

It may be observed, that the greatest quantity of mud is brought into the dock during spring tides, and particularly in dry seasons, when there is not much fresh water in the Hull; in neap tides, and during freshes in the river, very little mud comes in (Timperley 1842).

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