Another recent walks incorporating a visit to a parish church open to the public most days was around the part of Elloughton that includes the golf course.
Starting at the road junction opposite the United Reformed chapel the route goes south beside the road that leads to the centre of Brough, on the east side of this road can be seen a remaining wall of an otherwise demolished building which includes/included a dovecote in the loft as shown by recesses in the brickwork. These were deliberately designed to give the birds access from outside and opportunities to nest in the recesses. Residents would have had access to the loft and access to pigeons for food, to eggs also as pigeons do not have a exclusive nesting season.
Turn right along a lane with mansion-like residences along and towards the golf course. One residence being a castellated mock-castle building, rendered and painted white. The path continues west alongside the golf course on undulating ground at the foothills of the Yorkshire Wolds. Eventually the path leads to a modern section of the Roman road route between Brough and South Cave. Here one can turn back along the route just passed or walk the roadside north to a junction at which point turning east brings one back to the starting point.
Just a few hundred yards north of the starting point is St. Marys church, Elloughton. Most of this church is a product of restorations in the 1840s and early 20th century but the west tower’s walling is ashlar blocs of limestone from North Yorkshire while the south entrance door, protected since 1901 by a south porch, is a surviving fine example of an Early English style surround to the door with inset columns and dogtooth ornamentation in one of the orders (folds of the surrounding decoration). This church was apparently gutted by fire in 1964 before being restored, see Pevsner p. 402.
The history of the church building, as is often the case, is a mirror of the history of its settlement, the fact that this church was recoded as roofless in the 1840s showing that the community was not always as wealthy as today.
East Yorkshire buses (now part of the Go Ahead group) have a depot in the centre of the community serving routes between Brough to the south and Market Weighton to the north.
(to be continued).