Hide

Hunmanby Parish information from Bulmers' 1892.

hide
Hide
Hide

HUNMANBY:
Geographical and Historical information from the year 1892.

Wapentake of Dickering - Petty Sessional Division of Dickering - County Council Electoral Division of Hunmanby - Poor Law Union and County Court District of Bridlington - Rural Deanery of Scarborough - Archdeaconry of the East Riding - Diocese of York.

This parish is situated on the coast between Muston and Reighton, and for all civil purposes includes the chapelry of Fordon, which is ecclesiastically under Burton Fleming. The total area, including foreshore, is 8,452 acres, of which 6,988 acres are in the township and ecclesiastical parish of Hunmanby. Colonel Mitford is lord of the manor and chief landowner. There are several freeholders. The gross estimated rental is £10,818, the rateable value £9,189, and the population in 1891 was 1,309. The soil is various, the subsoil clay and wold chalk. Wheat, barley, oats, peas, and turnips are the chief crops, but a considerable portion of land is laid down in pasture, and cattle breeding is carried on to some extent.

The manor of Hunmanby, which was held by barony, was given by the Conqueror to Gilbert de Gant, his relative by marriage. This Gilbert was also lord of Swaledale, and received extensive grants of lands in other parts of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Bucks, Herts, &c., which had been filched from their English owners. Hunmanby remained in the possession of the Gants till the reign of Edward III., after which the manor passed, probably by the marriage of co-heiresses, in tripartite division known as Ross, Lennox, and Rossmore, to different families. Sometime in the 17th century the undivided manor, and a large portion of the soil, came into the possession of the Osbaldestons. Mary, daughter of Sir Richard Osbaldeston, Knight, married into the ancient family of Mitford, of Mitford Castle, Northumberland, and subsequently her great-grandson, Bertram Mitford, Esq., inherited the Osbaldeston estates. He thereupon assumed the additional surname of Osbaldeston before Mitford. He married his relative, Frances, daughter of Capt. Mitford. R.N., and died without issue in 1841. He was succeeded by his brother, the late Admiral Robert Mitford, who died in 1870, leaving an only daughter; but this entail being limited to the nearer male issue, the estate reverted to his cousin Lieut.Col. John Philip Osbaldeston Mitford, the present owner.

HUNMANBY HALL, the manorial residence of the Osbaldestons, is a red brick mansion, surrounded by gardens and woodlands. The entrance is through a Gothic archway, erected in 1829, in imitation of a monastic ruin. The residence of the earlier owners stood on an eminence now called Castle Hill, where traces of an ancient fortress are still visible

The village is pleasantly situated on the main road, three miles from Filey, eight miles N.W. by N. of Bridlington, and 10 miles south of Scarborough, with a station on the Hull and Scarborough branch of the North Eastern railway. Hunmanby had formerly a market, which was held on Tuesday, but it has long been abandoned. The base and shaft of the ancient market cross still stand on the village green adjoining the market square. Fairs for cattle, &c., are held on the 6th May and 29th October, and a Hiring for agricultural servants on the first Tuesday after November 23rd.

The name of the place, written Hundemanby in ancient documents, is evidently of Danish origin, but the derivation of the first portion of the word has not been ascertained with any degree of certainty. Allen, in his "History of the County of York," says : - " Of the name of this place, and also that of Barkerdale or Bartondale, a derivation has been suggested from the ancient existence of wolves in the vicinity, as if the houndsman or huntsman had resided at Hundemanby, and the hounds kept for their extirpation, had been kennelled in Barkerdale." By others the name is supposed to be indicative of the ancient division of the land into hundreds, and to signify the Hundredmen's by, or town of the hundred. *1

The church, dedicated to All Saints, is a large and interesting old edifice, consisting of chancel, nave with north aisle and south porch, and an embattlcd western tower with four crocketed pinnacles, containing a clock and three bells. It was probably founded in Saxon times, but the oldest parts of the present structure appear from the style of their architecture to belong to the 12th century. The lower part of the tower is Norman, but the upper part is apparently the work of a later period. The chancel arch is also Norman, and decorated with fresco work. The nave is divided from the aisle by an arcade of five lofty pointed arches, resting on pillars alternately round and octagonal. The church was restored and re-opened at a cost of £600, raised by private subscription, in 1845, and a new organ was erected the following year. The floors of the sacrarium and chancel were repaved in 1872 with tesselated tiles, at the expense of Col. Meadows Taylor and the Rev. R. Mitford Taylor, M.A., in memory of their uncle, Admiral Mitford. The chancel is furnished with ten stalls, and the nave and aisle with pews for 500 persons. The font is octagonal, and was presented by the late Chas. John Bigge, Esq., and the ancient Norman one has been relegated to the churchyard. Into the north wall of the aisle have been built several stones, once richly carved, on some of which may still be traced the heads of armoured knights. Around the nave is a series of 15 shields emblazoned with the armorial bearings of the Gant, Grimston, Ross, Constable, Percy, Osbaldeston, and other families, the ancient lords of Hunmanby. These shields of arms, originally 11 in number, were painted in distemper in the spandrils of the arches, but having become very much faded and defaced, they were re-painted on the present iron shields in more permanent colours in 1869, at the expense of W. Amhurst Tyssen Amhurst, Esq., and the arms of later owners added. Several of the windows are memorials, and many handsome tablets and monuments adorn the walls. On the north side of the chancel is an elegant marble monument by Fisher, of York, exhibiting a full-length figure of Piety, leaning pensively over an urn, her foot resting upon a skull, and bearing in her hand a palm branch - an emblem of victory. An inscription on the pediment records the deaths of several members of the Osbaldeston family. Another monument is inscribed to the honoured name of Archdeacon Wrangham, who was for 46 years vicar of the parish, and died in 1842. On the north wall is a marble tablet to Admiral Mitford, who died in 1870, and to whose memory a Gothic archway of stone has been erected at the entrance to the churchyard. Against the south wall of the nave is a murial tablet, to the memory of different members of the Darley family, and at the east end of the aisle is a very handsome monument to the Staveley family. The register dates from the year 1541, and is in good preservation from 1584. The living is a vicarage, valued in the Liber Regis at £20 1s. 8d., and now worth about £600 nett, with residence. It is in the gift of Col. Osbaldeston Mitford, and held by the Rev. Edward Mitford,

M.A., St. John's College, Cambridge. According to a grant preserved in Dugdale's Monasticon, Hundemanby was the "mother church" of Burton, Newton, Fordon, Muston, Folethorpe (now quite extinct, a footpath being all that now bears the name), Ruton, and Barkerdale.

The Wesleyan Chapel is an ornate structure of red brick with freestone dressings, erected in 1871, at a cost of £2,000, which was raised by subscription. It is in the Gothic style with a small gabled tower, carrying an ornamental ridge and finial. The interior is furnished with pitchpine benches for 500 worshippers. In connection with the chapel, which is in the Filey circuit, is a Sunday School, held in a building formerly used by the Baptists as a chapel. The Primitive Methodist Chapel is a plain brick building, erected in 1841, and has accommodation for 300 persons.

The National School (mixed) is an antiquated looking building, consisting of main room and class room. There is accommodation for 200 children, and an average attendance of 123. In connection with it is a branch of the Yorkshire Penny Bank. The Infant School, which stands at the junction of Stonegate and Hungate Lane, was formerly used as a Sunday School by the Wesleyans, from whom it was purchased in 1875, for the sum of £280. There is accommodation for 140 scholars, and an average attendance of 85.

Agriculture is the staple industry of the parish, and recently a small dairy factory has been established in the village. There are also three roperies and a brick and tile works. Gas works were erected by Mr. Richard Cooper, in 1853. The present works in Garton Lane were built in 1863. The gas is available for household purposes, but the streets are shrouded in darkness, the only public lamp in the village being one placed on the top of the memorial arch, at the entrance to the churchyard, in commemoration of the Queen's Jubilee, in 1887.

The village has its Temperance Hall, originally erected as a Wesleyan chapel, and purchased for £120; and it also had, until recently, its Literary Institute and Circulating Library. There are almshouses for four poor widows, and the poor also participate to the amount of £40 yearly in the charity of Henry Cowton, who left 147 acres of land for the benefit of the poor of Bridlington and Hunmanby. There is likewise a yearly rent-charge of £3 payable out of a close called Intacks, which is distributed in January and July. Not many years ago there were aged men living who remembered a board in the church with the following inscription thereon


"I, Gilbert Gant, do make the grant
Of Hunmanby Moor, to feed the poor,
That they may never want."

Hunmanby Moor has been inclosed and divided into farms, and the poor received in lieu of their rights thereon an allotment of garden ground.

Antiquities. - Many relics of pre-historic ages have been found in the parish and neighbourhood. These consist chiefly of implements of stone and flint, used by the Early Britons before they were acquainted with the use of metals. These arrow heads and axe heads, which may be seen in many local collections, belong chiefly to the Neolithic period of our history, when the Ancient Briton had acquired some skill in fabricating his weapons of flint. A barrow or tumulus was opened on Howe Farm, by Canon Greenwell, in 1889. It contained 15 skeletons, and among the bones were found 20 large jet buttons, cone-shaped, perforated with two holes, and one or two bronze rings. There is another of these sepulchral mounds on Lind House*2 Farm, which covers about an acre of ground. A large stone slab 10 feet square, probably part of a cistvaen, was turned up in the centre of the mound by a steam plough some little while ago. Two stone water bottles or jugs, of Roman make, were discovered under a tree on North Moor about 20 years ago, and are now in the possession of Mr. Samuel Clarkson.

Dr. R. Fiddes, author of "The Life of Cardinal Wolsey," and "Body of Divinity," &c., was born at Hunmanby in 1671.

*1Yorkshire Past and Present, Div. II., page 473.

*2Lind House, previously Graffitoe House, was so named in consequence of a visit paid to it by the celebrated Swedish Nightingale, Jenny Lind, in 1848.

[Description(s) from Bulmer's History and Directory of East Yorkshire (1892)]

Directories

  • Transcript of the entry for the Post Office, professions and trades in Bulmer's Directory of 1892.


Scan, OCR and html by Colin Hinson. Checking and correction by Peter Nelson.