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 no Victorian rectory is shown it must have been done before the 1860s. The image also shows the ruined chancel of St. Peter’s church as well as its lofty crossing tower, a prominent landmark then as now in its lowland landscape (very visible, for example, when travelling west on the M62 before crossing the majestic Ouse Bridge; also visible on a clear day from the top of the limestone escarpment scarp slope overlooking Trent Falls at Alkborough as is the spire of Goole church, but not, as some claim, the crossing tower of York Minster).
The huge manor of Howden, and the later area of Howdenshire, were from the reign of William I onwards in the territory administered first by the Anglo-Norman bishops of Durham and later by the Prior of Durham’s College of Secular Canons. The Norman ‘prince’ bishops of Durham exercised autocratic rule over the area, a fact that benefitted Howden in the Middle Ages as having a bishop’s summer residence (just as, for example, did Cawood for the Archbishops of York) and a college of secular canons generated many financial benefits.
A number of churches across the western part of Wallingfen, in the manor of Howden, were chapels of ease to Howden Minster and, from the 13th century to the Reformation, ministered by canons from the Minster. From Skipwith in the north to Saltmarshe in the south (all on the east bank of the River Ouse) most of these chapels of ease (now individual parishes) are fine architectural buildings in their own right.
(to be continued).