Wilfred goes back in time: Part II

The Yorkshire Wolds


Hi!  It's me, Wilfred!  I am still in London for another few weeks with my two dads, and we just came back from a big adventure for my half-term break.

We explored my Great Grandma's part of Nottinghamshire, including Sherwood Forest, home of Robin Hood!   Next, my Dad wanted to show me the part of the midlands where his Grandpa Storey's family came from 150 years ago -- the Yorkshire Wolds! 

The Wolds are in the East Riding of Yorkshire.    Wold is an olde English word that means rolling land, and the Yorkshire Wolds roll from the cliffs on the North Sea until they drop to the flats at the Vale of York.  Once, the wolds were wild and the people were fierce.  Now, it is mostly rolling farm fields, hedgerows, olden villages and sheep.

The Yorkshire Wolds

Sheep near Kilham

Our drive from Nottinghamshire took us halfway across the country!  That sounds like a long way, but it was really only an hour and a half -- nothing for Canadians, but Dad says the English have a different sense of distance. Our destination: Kilham, Yorkshire. 


Kilham is a tiny village today, near the market town of Driffield, but it was an important place in olden times before its people knew how to write things down, and it was once the capital of the Wolds.   Dad picked Kilham, because his great great grandpa Storey died near Orangeville (Canada) a hundred years ago, and he had carved on his gravestone, "Robert Barker Storey, son of Francis of Kilham"...  Nobody knew anything about Francis, or even where Kilham was!  It was a MYSTERY.

We checked into our Kilham B&B.  It was called the Blacksmith's Cottage and we had our own little place in back, in what used to be a shed where the blacksmith worked.



Me, Dad and the Blacksmith's Cottage

Me with Poppy in our shed

Me with the dog, Bowser.  He liked me...especially when I rubbed his belly.

Today, Kilham is really, really small - only 500 people, living 5 miles off the main highway surrounded by farmland.  All you could hear was the wind in the fields and the bleating of sheep.    Dad couldn't even get Wifi or cell phone service.    But for some mysterious reason, Kilham was important to long ago people.  This little village only has one main street now, but it has nine olden day roads leading into it.   


In their long time ago language, Kilham meant, "the spring at the top of the hill".  The Yorkshire Wolds are made of chalk so there isn't much water.  Maybe for the olden day people, Kilham spring was part of their religion.   Dad told me, there are olden burial mounds and strange ditches (called a "cursus") that long ago people dug from the chalk to line up with stars.  They are mostly between Kilham and the next village, Rudston.   Why they are here, nobody knows for sure, but this place was important 4,000 years ago.

Kilham one street today

In the middle of the village, on the highest point of the hill, is the old Norman church... It looks REALLY old with strange stone carving at the door (and a funny weathervane..)



The old Norman church seems old even for old Norman churches

The entrance is carved with old and odd symbols

Old and odd carving.  What do you think it means?

Is that a spring?  Why the stars?  It is a mystery.

...with a turkey on top...odd....

There has been a fair in Kilham for nearly a thousand years.  A sign in the village square says that in medieval times they had "bull-baiting" at them.  Dad explained that for a sport they used to tie a bull to an iron ring and bet on fights between the bull and hunting dogs.    The iron ring is still there...  Sometimes, I don't get sports... 

The ancient spring is now a duck pond

Dad said that 4xGreat Grandpa Francis Storey moved to Kilham as an old man.  Why, no one knows.  He lived most of his life in Nafferton, a village 3 miles away.  We could find no clues in Kilham, just more mysteries, so Nafferton was our next stop. 

From the old census, Dad knew Francis, and 4xG Grandma Eliza, lived next door to a coach inn called "The Cross Keys".  This was where Robert Barker Storey was born in the early 1800s. The inn was run by Francis' dad (my 5x Great Grandpa, also named Robert).  After Francis' dad died, The Cross Keys was run by Francis' sister,  Mary Elizabeth and her husband, Christopher Meeke.  And guess what?  The inn is still there!

The Cross Keys where my 5xGreat Grandpa was an innkeeper in the mid 1800s

The house next door where 3x GG Robert Barker Storey was born.
The coach horse stables are still behind it.

We went inside and told the innkeeper minding the pub about GGGG Grandpa.  He was glad to meet us and showed us all around (Poppy thought he might offer him a free BEER -- but no luck).  Inside the inn it is a lot different, the innkeeper said, but the outside looks exactly the same as it did150 years ago when 5xGreat Grandpa Robert Storey ran it.  The inn is on the corner of the High Street (what the English call the main street) and the road to Driffield, the largest nearby town.  The Storeys looked after stage coach travellers and had three stables out back.  5xGreat Grandpa Robert was called a "victualler", because he served "victuals", which is an olden day word for FOOD!  Francis was a sadler and a farm servant -- growing food and minding the horses.

Nafferton is another very old village.  In the olden language "ton" means farm or home and Naffer is from Nafftar, a name that means "night traveller".  Why it is called this is another mystery.


The inn where Francis and his family lived was at the edge of Nafferton.  Dad wanted to show me something in the centre.  We headed down the High Street where my 3x Great Grandpa Robert Barker Storey walked when he was a little boy in the 1800s.  In the middle of the village is a mill pond with lots of ducks.   There, at the corner of Coppergate and the High Street, is an old house and sheds.  From the census, Dad knew this was where Robert Barker Storey's other grandparents lived -- Samuel and Eleanor Barker, who sold groceries and dry goods.

Home of Samuel & Eleanor Barker GG x5

Nafferton's geese and ducks check me out

While Poppy and I looked at ducks, Dad climbed the hill into the old churchyard across from the mill pond.  He was soon back -- all excited.  He found something!  A gravestone for Robert Barker Storey's grandma, Eleanor Barker.  

5xGGrandma Eleanor Barker

Her view from the churchyard

Her grave stone faces over the pond and the house where she & 5xG Grandpa lived.  We also found a stone for Francis' sister, Mary Elizabeth, who ran the Cross Keys with her husband, Christopher Meeke.  


Me looking for more olden family in the Nafferton churchyard



My 4x GG Aunt and her husband, the innkeepers 

But that was all...

We looked for more, but the rest of the churchyard was grown over with grass and nettles and prickly holly.  If Francis was here, we couldn't find him. 


On our way back to our B&B after supper, Dad wanted to stop at the village of Rudston – 2 miles east of Kilham.  It's name actually once was "rood stone".  Rood means "cross" and the rood is a legendary mystery of its own.   The rood stone is in the churchyard.   The Rudston church is a thousand years old but it was built on top of an even older olden day one, which was built next to the old, old, OLD rood stone. 

Dad says that stone is actually a prehistoric megalith and that the megalith could be older than Stonehenge.  Can you even believe it?

The Rudston megalith is 4000 years old

The megalith is the tallest standing stone in the UK.  It is 26 feet high and weighs 40 tons and 4,000 years ago, long ago people dragged this rock over 9 miles to the top of a hill. 

The Rudston megalith faces the sunrise at Winter Solstice...
and so do all the headstones in the cemetary

Dad didn't expect to find anyone here he knew, but he noticed a headstone close by with a name he recognized.   It was Robert Barker Storey's sister: Eliza Ann and her husband, William Pinkney.  (How could you forget a name like Eliza Pinkney?)  She was Francis' daughter.  But still no sign of Francis.

My 4x Great Aunt Eliza Pinkney

The next morning, after a big breakfast in the Blacksmith's breakfast room, we got back into our rental car for more exploring.   By now, Dad was used to changing gears with the wrong hand and Poppy was used to sitting on the wrong side of the road... but it was hard on Poppy's nerves on narrow bridges and narrow, narrow roads, especially on hills when you couldn't see over them.


Before the Storeys moved to Nafferton to run the Cross Keys, Francis' dad ran a different inn in the village of Harpham, 3 miles east, and that was where Francis was born. 


Harpham was once on a coach road between York and the sea.  It has a 1000 year-old church AND its very own SAINT – St. John of Beverley.  It also has a mystical well that ever since an olden time called the Dark Ages has done miracle cures.  Pilgrims used to come here to drink the water if they were sick or had trouble getting a baby. 

This is where the Storeys ran an inn for at least a hundred years and sold victuals to hungry pilgrims.  In those days, the 1700s, it was called “The Anchor”.  And it's still there!  Except, now it's called the “St. Quintin’s Arms Inn”.  

Our rental car outside the inn at Harpham

Francis was born in the inn that was run by his dad (Robert Storey) that was run by his dad (Richard Storey) that was run by HIS dad (Christopher) Storey.  

Dad and the inn run by our family 300 years ago -
birthplace of Francis Storey

I guess, the well was especially good for getting babies.  Christopher Storey was born in Harpham in 1693.  He and his wife, Elizabeth, had 11 kids.  His son Richard fathered 15.  Dad said there had to be something in that water.  

Poppy and I check out the mystical well. 

Dad peeked in the window and the Harpham innkeeper came out to see what we were all about.  He told us this had to be the place, because it was the only inn to ever be in Harpham and he also said that the St. Quintin family – the lords of the manor who own most of Harpham – still own the inn and are his landlords today, just as they would have been Christopher Storey’s landlords 300 years ago.   The inn looks across a village green to the manor farm and another old, old church. 

In the churchyard, we found the gravestones for Francis’ other sister, Jane, but no sign of Francis. 

The view across the village green from the inn

Me and Dad at the Harpham church

In Canada, a hundred and fifty years ago, Robert Barker Storey married a girl named Mary Harding, who came from Burton Agnes... which was just a mile and a half down the road.

So, in Burton Agnes, we found... 

... a tunnel of yews... 

...another old church...

...dead lords and ladies...

...a creepy crypt...

... a manor as big as a palace ...

...but no more relations of any kind.

Dad made an announcement. He still wanted to see Flamborough and Bempton and Bridlington -- places where other olden relations where born and died -- about 8 miles east by the sea,  but because I was such a good sport -- no more churchyards for me.

At Flamborough there have been Romans, Vikings, and buccaneers.  We walked the chalk cliffs, ate lunch on the beach, looked in caves and I put my feet in the F-R-E-E-Z-I-N-G North Sea.

At Bempton, we went to a nature reserve and sea bird sanctuary.  I got a knapsack and binoculars and a pamphlet to help spot sea birds.  I saw thousands of sea gulls, but you know what else?  I saw real Puffins!!  CAN YOU EVEN BELIEVE IT!?

And when we got to Bridlington, Dad said Great, Great, Great Grandpa Robert Barker Storey wouldn't recognize the place.  In Victorian times, after he left, Bridlington the  fishing village became a seaside resort with a boardwalk and honky-tonks.  Now, it has an amusement park, fun rides and stalls that sell "cheese-y chips & gravy" and fish and chips smothered in curry!  Ewwww....

 

We never did find 4xGreat Grandpa Francis Storey or solve the mystery of why he moved to Kilham.  Poppy thought he might have wanted to live nearer his daughter, even if he only lived 3 miles away in the first place.  But then, like Dad says, the English have a different sense of distance. 

Dad said, if 3xGreat Grandpa Robert Barker knew that his dad had moved to Kilham in his last years, then that showed they kept in touch, even though GGG Grandpa Robert Barker was on the other side of the world in the backwoods of Canada.  Maybe Dad decided, it wasn't the distance between them that mattered so much as how close they stayed.  After all, the thing GGG Grandpa wanted most to be remembered was he was Robert Barker Storey, son of Francis of Kilham.

I will talk to you next week.  Bye for now, Wilfie