The above image of the south-facing side of Rise Hall in central Holderness is dated to about 1820, that is soon after it was built. This large but somewhat plain property was built of the site on the site of medieval/early modern predecessors, the west facing front being the principal façade (shown above in shadow). Rise Hall is not open to the public and is currently owned and being restored by a television personality.
The mostly restored parkland is a product of a landscape scheme designed by Capability Brown for the Bethell family who lived in the previous house. The stable-block and coach-house with a central courtyard also predate the present hose and, unlike the house, are built entirely of brick. Rise Hall has had various public uses before returning to a being a private house, one being the complex for a sisterhood of nuns and a Roman Catholic school. It stands in the central part of the plain of Holderness just a few miles north of Burton Constable Hall.
Speaking of the River String, a couple of blogs ago, there was a period when I was about 10 or so that I would walk with my father on a Sunday morning down Fen Road (now Oxborough Road) to the small bridge over the stream. One of his maxims in life was ‘never go out without a piece of string, a shilling (5 pence) and a knife. Not that he was in a gang, just that these sort of things had been useful during his life. On one particular summer’s morning I had borrowed his knife and while leaning over the railings/parapet inadvertently dropped it into the water which was too deep for it to be retreaved. He told me it was one he had had in the Great War (see Publication ‘Sidney Walter Clarke, 1899-1987’) and now, 40 years on, it was gone. Sad – ‘neither a lender or a borrower be’.