The scan above is from Neave, D. Lost Churches and Chapels of Hull (Hutton Press, 1991, 66). The present day small church on Church Lane (off Marfleet Lane, Hedon Rd. end) was built in 1884 and is the third church to be built on this site or nearby. The present church has a basic nave and chancel, west-front entrance and a bell-cote above. Like St. Mary’s, Sculcoates todays church has some fixtures and fittings from its predecessor, especially a ‘fine series of early to mid-19th century wall tablets, some of the best in Hull’ (Neave, D. Yorkshire: York and the East Riding, 1995, 509).
The scan above shows the second church built on the site in 1793. This small classic Georgian church was designed by George Pycock who also designed the original Hull Infirmary (where Prospect Centre now is) and the fine ornate Neptune Inn on the south side of Whitefriargate. Built of brick with two/three stage buttresses and a continuous nave and chancel the wide lancet windows had rectangular and intersecting tracery, probably made of wood. Above the west entrance and window was a short octagonal tower capped by a broad octagonal cupola. On page 66 David Neave credits George Poulson’s History of Holderness, 1840, as the source of the illustration.
The first surviving record of the original church on this site, or nearby, dates from the early 13th century and in 1650 Marfleet was said to be ‘fit to be made a parish’. By 1706 the medieval church building was described as a ‘parish church’ (p. 66), this possibly contradicting my statement in the previous blog that Marfleet was a dispersed settlement. The statement that no picture of the medieval church ‘has yet been found’ (p.66) may have a challenger as will be stated in the next blog.
(to be continued)