On Thursday 3rd July decided to do a testing walk from Pocklington to, and round, Kilnwick Percy estate which would have made it a circular walk. The weather forecast predicted a cloudy afternoon, which was good given all the baking hot weather of late. The Explorer map 294 showed two footpaths climbing up the wold side towards Kilnwick Percy, at the top of the climb, however, I took the wrong route, and by the time I realised the mistake had walked a long way down a wooded wold side and couldn’t face going all the way back up. So decided to walk the Pocklington – Millington road into Millington. Could have taken a short cut footpath across some fields but the only access from the road was an old two-plank stile and Molly, the dog, just couldn’t work out how to cross it, and these days I cannot lift her 36 kilos. The Rambler’s Rest at Millington provided a welcome rest place from where could walk back to Pocklington along the North edge of the Kilnwick Percy estate (this meaning I would only get a view of the Home Farm not the Hall itself). Having crossed the large K.P. golf course eventually got back to the point where I had taken the wrong path in the morning. Unfortunately it didn’t cloud over in the afternoon so the heat added to the mix. It proved to be a testing eight plus miles, but we did it.
The Cassini Historical Map 106, 1824-1858, covers much of southern East Yorkshire as copied from contemporary O.S. maps. As back then O.S. maps were just black and white they can be confusing as height (slopes) is shown by hashuring, not contours, and landed estates are shown by further shading, the effect being to make any wording on these maps almost illegible. The Kilnwick Percy estate was/is north of the Pocklington to Warter road and extending north to Millington Beck.
I don’t know which landscape designers (architects) were connected with the K.P. estate but it has a number of features common to the 18th century emparking including articficial lakes, a home farm and strategically located woodland plantations. D. Neave describes the history of the Hall on p.579 of Pevsner East Riding as revised in 2005. Although nothing of it survives there was a substantial house on the site of the current hall back in the 1570s and it’s interesting to wonder if the then occupants made use of building materials from the dissolved Benedictine nunnery (founded mid 12th century) to the south of the present estate where the settlement of Nunburnholme now is.