March 2020

Just to complete the ‘aside’ on Howden manor with a brief mention of three of the six churches within Howdenshire under the authority of the  diocese of Durham. The image above, taken from a leaflet produced as part of a restoration appeal for Hemingbrough Minster, shows a pre-photo view of St. Mary’s church from the […]

The image above is copied from Bilson’s article but not dated. It shows the buildings that once existed along the west wall of Howden’s Bishop’s Palace courtyard, the only surviving part now, and when Bilson was writing, being the rear wall. The image then was probably made in the early 19th or 18th century, as

Having  been diverted to the early days of Pickering Park, Hull I need to get back to the theme in hand. Another old booklet I bought at Hull History Centre (s.p.b.s) is entitled ‘The Manor-House of the Bishops of Durham at Howden’ written by John Bilson, F.S.A. this being reprinted from the Yorkshire Archaeological Journal

Following on yesterday’s blog and focusing on the ‘entertainment’ section of Pickering Park (see yesterday’s picture). The Park’s bandstand was planned to be ‘sunken’ and the part of the Park where this once was is somewhat sunken today. I think the intention was to be amphitheatre-like with terraced seating around the central performance area, five

The map extract above focusses on the ‘entertainments’ section of Pickering Park in the inter-war years. As with the ‘Recreation Ground’ (see yesterday’s map extract) Pickering was forward thinking in providing ‘tennis ground’ and ‘bowling green’ from the outset whereas the three other municipal parks in Hull had had to incorporate bowling greens particularly into

The image above is an extract from a 1920s O.S. 25inch map showing Pickering Park. By then the boating lake, with six islands, this more than in East Park, had been dug (s.p.b.). Christopher Pickering before the Great War had always wanted the digging of this lake to be done by unemployed workmen at the