Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

William, Mary [Hutchinson or Barker?], Sara, and I went to Scarborough, and we walked in the abbey pasture, and to Wykeham, and on Monday, the 26th, we went off with Mary in a post-chaise. We had an interesting ride over the Wolds, though it rained all the way. Single thorn bushes were scattered about on the turf, sheep-sheds here and there, and now and then a little hut. Swelling grounds, and sometimes a single tree or a clump of trees. We passed through one or two little villages, embosomed in tall trees. After we had parted from Mary, there were gleams of sunshine, but with showers. We saw Beverley in a heavy rain, and yet were much pleased with the beauty of the town. Saw the minster – a pretty, clean building, but injured very much with Grecian architecture. The country between Beverley and Hull very rich, but miserably flat – brick houses, windmills, houses again – dull and endless. Hull a frightful, dirty, brick-housey, tradesman-like, rich, vulgar place; yet the river – though the shores are so low that they can hardly be seen – looked beautiful with the evening lights upon it, and boats moving about. We walked a long time, and returned to our dull day-room but quiet evening one, to supper.

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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.

Abbreviations:

• ER: East Riding
• GM: Greater Manchester
• NR: North Riding
• NY: North Yorkshire
• SY: South Yorkshire
• WR: West Riding
• WY: West Yorkshire

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Original

Friday Evening, 16th July.— Sara, Tom, and I rode up Bedale. Wm., Mary [Hutchinson or Barker?], Sara, and I went to Scarborough, and we walked in the Abbey pasture, and to Wykeham; and on Monday, the 26th, we went off with Mary in a post-chaise. We had an interesting ride over the Wolds, though it rained all the way. Single thorn bushes were scattered about on the turf, sheep-sheds here and there, and now and then a little hut. Swelling grounds, and sometimes a single tree or a clump of trees…. We passed through one or two little villages, embosomed in tall trees. After we had parted from Mary, there were gleams of sunshine, but with showers. We saw Beverley in a heavy rain, and yet were much pleased with the beauty of the town. Saw the minster – a pretty, clean building, but injured very much with Grecian architecture. The country between Beverley and Hull very rich, but miserably flat—brick houses, windmills, houses again – dull and endless. Hull a frightful, dirty, brickhousey, tradesmanlike, rich, vulgar place; yet the river – though the shores are so low that they can hardly be seen – looked beautiful with the evening lights upon it, and boats moving about. We walked a long time, and returned to our dull day-room but quiet evening one, to supper.

223 words.

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.

• Bedale (2) ·
• Beverley Minster (7) ·
• Beverley (21) ·
• Dorothy Wordsworth (2) ·
• East Riding of Yorkshire (66) ·
• Humber (20) ·
• 📌Kingston upon Hull (65) ·
• 📌Port of Hull (17) ·
• 📌Scarborough (19) ·
• Sheep (27) ·
• Windmill (4) ·
• Wordsworth, William (1770-1850) (6), poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint Lyrical Ballads (1798) ·
• Wykeham, Scarborough (1) ·
• Yorkshire Wolds (23) ·

All tags.

Similar

• 5 July 1858: The view from the tower of Beverley Minster
• 15 July 1802: In the Hambleton Hills, Dorothy and William Wordsworth visit Rievaulx and see Scottish cattle travelling to London
• 1 July 1840: The opening of the Hull and Selby Railway counters threats to Hull’s port from Goole, Scarborough and Bridlington
• 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
• 13 November 1478: Edward IV orders the London merchant adventurers to allow their Yorkshire colleagues fair access to Low Countries markets for their woollen cloth
• 4 September 1764: Laurence Sterne, curate at Coxwold, is minded to sin at Scarborough
• 1 April 1641: Tips on bringing ewes and lambs to market in the East Riding today, Easter Monday
• 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
• 1 April 1641: Henry Best of Elmswell (Driffield) weighs his wool for a purchaser from Beverley
• 21 September 1549: The leaders of the Seamer Rebellion – egalitarian, republican and Catholic – against the Edwardian Reformation are hanged at York