Yorkshire Almanac 2026

Unedited excerpt

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On June 13, 1709, an ordinance or rule was made at Whitby for burying their dead at three in the afternoon; which rule was signed by his Grace, the Archbishop of York, by Hugh Cholmeley and John Cholmeley, Esqrs; and by twenty eight more of the principal inhabitants; and it hath been adhered to ever since, with this variation only, that five in the afternoon is now the stated hour for burying from Lady-day till Michaelmas.

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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.

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Tags

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• Burial (12) W/G ·
• John Sharp (bishop) (1) W/G ·
• Lady Day (1), Feast of the Annunciation, celebrated 25 March, commemorates the visit of the archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary to tell her that she would be the mother of Jesus Christ W/G ·
• Michaelmas (6), feast principally of St. Michael on 29 September, one of the four quarter days of the financial, judicial, and academic year, in medieval England the beginning and end of the husbandman's year, hence hiring fairs at this time W/G ·
• St Mary’s Church, Whitby (2) W/G ·
• 📌Whitby (22), town, port and parish on the east coast of North Yorkshire/the North Riding at the mouth of the River Esk W/G ·

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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.

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Similar

10 December 1710: A Whitby puppeteer tries to take revenge on a delinquent spectator

12 September 1680: Francis and Mary Huntrodes are buried together at St. Mary’s, Whitby with a poetic epitaph

29 September 1684: It being Michaelmas, the Jolly Pinder of Wakefield (in song) deserts his beasts and pound and joins Robin Hood in the greenwood

25 May 1870: An Ascension Eve performance for tourists of the Whitby Penny Hedge ritual

30 September 1859: A popular village brass band contest at the Golden Lion, Loftus (near Saltburn)

20 January 1536: Thomas Cromwell’s dissolvers of monasteries, Richard Layton and Thomas Legh, report allegations of whoring and theft by William Thirsk, Abbot of Fountains

30 May 1836: Albinia Chaloner becomes the last person to be interred in York Minster

7 June 1703: A list of shares in ship-owning partnerships held by Samuel Pinder of Whitby on this date

3 May 1641: On the day of the discovery of the True Cross, Driffield folk start moving their livestock out of town to high summer pasture, endangering crops

6 February 1906: A reporter gains exclusive access to the entombment of Horatio Bright, a Sheffield steel merchant and lapsed Jew, alongside his first wife and only son

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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.

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The scan is from Chris Hobbs, who has a great collection of information on Horatio Bright. The mausoleum is at 53.389403,-1.645310, and was robbed in the 1980s, after which the bodies were reinterred at Crookes Cemetery, not at Ecclesfield Jewish Cemetery as Judy Simons claims (Simons 2021). Mary Alice and Samuel Bright had died in 1891. Hobbs says that Mary Alice “was embalmed and placed in a glass sided coffin. The mausoleum was decorated with pictures, statutes and ornaments and fitted with mahogany panelling. He even installed a small hand operated organ so that he could play funeral music to his departed love ones on his frequent visits.” The organ story may or may not be true, but our reporter specifically rebuts the first two claims. Given Bright’s atheism, or agnosticism, or personal faith, I’m curious who paid for the Methodist chapel adjoining the plantation in which he was laid to rest:

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