Author name: Richard Clarke

The ‘tours’ (towers) Leland refers to may have been simply showy pieces of domestic architecture, after all what could have been more ‘showy’ than an eye-catching tower rising well above the general roofline. However, there may have more prosaic purposes. For example, they would have enabled the ‘Old Harbour’ and the middle Humber Estuary to […]

An intriguing feature of Leland’s description of Hull in the early 1540s is his reference to various ‘tours’ (towers and s.p.b.). The photo above of St. Mary, Lowgate shows a tower he would not have seen because this one wasn’t constructed until 1697 (the passageway through its ground floor section came later). At the time

John Leland’s description of Hull in the 1540s is thorough for the time and, indeed, later travelogue writers may have used his information as much as discovering new stuff for themselves. As well as noting the points made in blog 2 he described the town walls in considerable detail, including the section along the Humber

Just off the coast and at the north end of Whitley Bay is St. Mary’s Island and lighthouse (technically not an island as it is linked to the mainland by a causeway crossable at low tide, see above). The lighthouse and lighthouse keeper’s cottage have been a tourist attraction since the early 1990s, the lighthouse

On the opposite side of the road to Blyth to the Caravan Park is Whitley Bay’s municipal cemetery (North Tyneside Metropolitan region). This is a very well kept cemetery but nevertheless with clear biodiversity objectives, these achieved by having the main access paths tree-lined (not sure what species of tree but at a common height

As promised, the first of three blogs on the above interrupting the run on Descriptions of Hull. The picture above, taken this morning, shows the sandy upper beach and rocky lower beach at low tide, taken from the promenade at the north end of Whitley Bay leading to St. Mary’s island and lighthouse (see later).