Author name: Richard Clarke

Today’s photo shows the underside of a misericord cleverly carved to show a seasonal scene, such carvings often showed a scene for each season, even a scene for each month of the year. Here an autumnal scene – a man knocking acorns from an oak tree to feed the swine (pigs) grazing on the floor […]

Professor English starts her Chapter 5 with some statements about Holderness’ basic geology, as has been done here over the last few blogs. She then goes on to that line of thought which is always so interesting; that being to come to reasonable speculations about the pre-historic flora, fauna and landscape. Mesolithic Holderness might be

Above is a photo of part of an exhibit about fishing in Holderness taken in the Hull and East Riding Museum. The Bulletin (s.p.b.s) concludes with what I always think is a good example of not taking place-names at face-value. Skipsea, Hornsea, Withernsea and Kilnsea are by the sea – but when these place-names were

The sketch above is taken from the Bulletin (s.p.b.s) and given the caption ‘Fishing the mere in medieval times’. One point made in the Bulletin (s.p.b.s) is that the meres would have provided a range of resources for local settlers, reeds, wildfowl and fish (potentially). Later fish provided a staple food for ‘In the Church

There are two natural islands in Hornsea Mere, Swan Island (see a bit of above) and, the smaller, Lady Island. The photo above shows how meres developed in lower land between undulations which became vegetated. Even millennia ago the current-day Hornsea Mere would have been a large example, many would have been much smaller. From

In 1988 Humberside County Council Archaeology Unit published a Bulletin summarising their North Holderness Survey. To continue this section of my study I will precis their information before going on to precis the final chapter in Professor English’s book ‘The Lords of Holderness 1086 – 1260’. Inevitably the four unitary authorities that replaced Humberside County