Yorkshire Almanac 2026

Unedited excerpt

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

A Sabbath eve – and all around was peace –
A dear old Church, slow-crumbling to decay –
God’s servant speaking words of hallowed grace,
And pointing out the life, the truth, the way.
His voice so earnest thrilled my listening ear,
‘Minding me now of that calm summer’s night
When, to his flock he said in accents clear –
“He was a burning and a shining light.”
And bade his hearers to so live their days
That, like St. John, they be prepared for Heaven,
And, falling not in worldom’s wicked ways
To hope, and trust, and pray to be forgiven;
So that when dead, their light to all will shine
Showing they lived on earth for life divine.

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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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• 📌Bulmer, North Yorkshire (3) W/G ·
• Church of England (94) W/G ·
• Jesus (3) W/G ·
• John the Baptist (2) W/G ·
• Light (1) W/G ·
• Midsummer (1) W/G ·
• Nativity of John the Baptist (1) W/G ·
• North Riding of Yorkshire (51) W/G ·
• Poetry (75) W/G ·
• Ryedale (7) W/G ·
• Saint John’s Eve (1) W/G ·
• Solstice (1) W/G ·
• Sonnet (1) 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

29 February 1824: Prophet John Wroe is baptised on the Leap Day in the Aire near Apperley Bridge before an audience of 30,000

28 May 1574: William Ireland fails to become Rector of Harthill (South Yorkshire) because of his abysmal ignorance

17 May 1321: Isabella Dayvill, apostate nun, is banished to suffer silence, hunger and punishment at Handale Priory (North Riding)

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

5 August 1605: Debauched and ruined, Walter Calverley is crushed to death today at York for the murder of two sons at Calverley Hall (Bradford), but is revived by 1830s schoolboy ghost-raisers as the Rev. Samuel Redhead (age ca. 55)

25 May 1728: King Jessop, the fighting rector of Treeton (Rotherham), is buried at Sheffield, and remembered for his punch and his parody

30 July 1820: Primitive Methodists try to disrupt the traditional Maudlin Fair football match between Hedon and Preston (Holderness)

20 September 1635: Angry villagers bear William Hodshon on a pole into Sunday service at Appleton Wiske (Northallerton), assisted by a bagpiper and a churchwarden

15 December 1888: Frank Kidson longs for Leeds’s musical Christmasses past

19 February 1557: At a tithe hearing, Ralph Dicconson (60) of Malton recalls his visits 40 years ago as a pedlar to Kirkham Priory before its dissolution in 1539

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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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This broad balk is presumably a portion left untouched between ploughed portions as boundary, path or waste – see e.g. this beautiful medieval ridge and furrow at Pickering. I’m guessing it’s the boundary with Welburn land on the east of the plot shown on this satellite image – but this may help clarify. Also historical mapping.

Ra.: Radulphus, Ralph?

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