A Browse around Winteringham

ISBN 0-9516809-0-0

Cover - A view looking from the east along the street now called West End, about 1905, at noon on a spring day. The made-up pavement contrasts with the untarmaced road. A row of low 18th century houses to the right has been interrupted by one Victorian brick house, and development of the same period is reflected by the farmhouse and chapel the opposite side, on ground previously pasture.

A BROWSE AROUNDWINTERINGHAM

Compiled by The Winteringham WEA BranchHeld under the auspices of Barton-on-Humber WEA

and the University of Hull1989-1990

Winteringham WEA Branch, 1990

A B r o w s e a r o u n d W i n t e r i n g h a m

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A B r o w s e a r o u n d W i n t e r i n g h a m A B r o w s e a r o u n d W i n t e r i n g h a m

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INTRODUCTIONWinteringham lies a little to the west of the place where Ermine Street comes from the south to the Humber. In Romano-British times there was a crossing to Brought, to meet the northern continuation of the road; the Humber was then considerably narrower than now. and erosion has made reconstruction of contemporary settlement and means of communication difficult. The site of the present main settlement must have been considerably more distant from the tidal waters of the estuary. There is no suggestion at present that there was Romano-British habitation on any large scale on the village site, the main area being at a place now effectively destroyed by the combination of human and natural activity, well to the east, along the Humber bank. When the Ermine Street ceased to be the main road through the north of Lincolnshire-perhaps in the 12th century-and land routes deviated eastwards through Brigg to Barton, the area north of Scawby effectively became the terra incognita - the unknown land-of sand dunes, dense woodland, and scattered settlements, some destroyed by the oncoming dunes. Winteringham could look towards the Humber for communication and trade; its haven was considered sufficiently good for a market charter to be granted in 1317, and planned development of new settlement took place along what are still called the High and Low Burgages. Its Mediaeval importance is however difficult to gauge, and there has been no systematic investigation of (he archaeology of the settlement; however, there is no suggestion of any post-Medieval decline in the area of habitaiion, and evidence from along the south bank of the Humber, and its hinterland, suggests that the region was one of relative wealth.

In early modern times, the processes of enclosure appear to have begun in Winteringham in the late 16th and 17th centuries; they continued piecemeal, so that an enclosure agreement took the form of an Act in 1761, although it is likely that this merely recognised what had already begun. A second Act was needed in 1795, to rectify parts of the previous one, and to take in the open Cow Pastures. In the 18th and 19th centuries the settlement functioned much as an estate or closed village, being owned predominantly by the Scarborough family until 1793, and then by Robert Smith, who became the first Ixird Carrington; his descendants retained it until the 1920’s. Social and economic development were very much normal for the area; life proceeded quietly, at a gentle pace, with only little local crises to disturb things, and these would appear to have been little enough. The huge prosperity of 19th century agriculture came and went, but without the depression after 1870 which hit other parts; Lincolnshire generally was not as badly affected, and the northern pans of the county got off particularly lightly. Briefly, in the early decades of the present century, the North Lincolnshire Light Railway seemed to promise abnormal development, work and wealth, but came to nothing, and Winteringham shared in consequence wry little in the wealth which accrued to villages better placed to draw from the new activity on the Frodingham ironficlds. The village managed to remain a quiet haven-in both senses-looking peacefully out towards the Humber.

There is no early History of Winteringham, and records are somewhat thin. William Andrew’s HISTORY OF WINTERINGHAM AND ADJOINING VILLAGES (1836) contains a brief narrative, as does the rare GUIDE AND HANDBOOK TO WINTERINGHAM AND DISTRICT by C. E. Trimmer and D. L. Andrew, published in Brigg in 1912. Substantial studies cover the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, both produced by Winteringham WEA Branch. These are WINTERINGHAM 1650*1760 (1984) and A HISTORY OF A VILLAGE: WINTERINGHAM 1761-1871 (1980). They are essential reading, and the former includes an important scries of transcribed probate inventories.

EXPLANATORY NOTESo many photographs were found that choice became problematic; a large number have been held over with the intention of producing a Second Collection. Organisation of the pages which follow is broadly geographical, and is based on the idea of a walk round the village. The pictures do not fall precisely into place this way, but the reader will find that all the street views are in sequence, and the route can be traced on the map on page 4.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSFor the loan of photographs;

Mr. Norman BarleyMrs. J. BatemanMr. D. BellMrs. E. BellMr. G. L. BoothMr. & Mrs. J. BrattonMiss M. BrattonMiss Edna BurkillMiss Kathleen BurkillMrs. J. BushMrs. A. Carnaby Mr. Alan Codling Mrs. Ethel Ellis Mrs. E. Firth Mr. D. Hatton

Mrs. M. IronsMr. & Mrs. C. KnowlesMr. Alec OggMrs. K. OggMiss K. OggMrs. P. OggMr. Schofield, BarrowScunthorpe MuseumMr. J. SewellMrs. D. SmithMr. & Mrs. T. SmithMrs. Audrey SpinkMrs. A. StanderlineMrs. Susan York, Kirton-in-Lindsey

Most of those who have loaned photographs have taken trouble providing information as well, and in great measure it is this which makes the pictures live. The members of the WEA class provided many pictures from their own collections; detailed acknowledgement of this, and a photograph of the class itself, will be included in the Second Collection.

There will be faults and omissions in the following text, for which I apologise. Please make your corrections known to class members. Wiih some photographs, so much information was made available that there had to be editing; with some, conflicting information was gathered, and I have tried to use discretion; in a few cases, very little information was forthcoming, and additional facts in such instances would be welcome.

Nick LyonsAppleby,

August 1990


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The village, about 1900, from a sale map based on O.S.- data. The exact scale has been lost in copying. Numbers refer to the approximate sites where certain pictures were taken, to show the progression around the settlement. Pictures on the cover and pages 9, 10, 44 and 45 were taken at Gate End, marked with a cross.


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Silver Street, looking east from Gate End, about 1905, a photograph from the same series as that on the cover. On the left is Edwin Bratton, born 1871, who worked at the shipyard on the Haven. He is returning home about midday; his box-for a mid-morning refreshment-usually still contained a piece of cake, which he habitually left for one of his children to find. The boy is William Brumby, known as Wheeler; he was born in 1892, and is named later in this collection. The two small figures much further along the pavement are Matt Robinson (see page 27), and W. H. Smith, the village carrier. On the right of the picture is Dawson’s shop; Dawson was a butcher, killing his own meat on the premises. The boy standing further into the road is Sid Dawson; with him is Harold Ogg, and a Dawson sister stands in the gateway to the shop yard. Nearer to the camera is Charlie Clayton who married Lizzie Bratton-the maid on page 26. Like West End, this street had undergone some redevelopment in the 19th century, large, brick-fronted houses coming gradually to replace the low, stone-built dwellings of the 18th century or before.


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Above

Mr. and Mrs. Fred Kirkby, with their daughter-in-law Jessie, taken at the rear of a cottage in Silver Street about 1930. Fred Kirkby came to the village in 1890 as shepherd at Eastfield Farm, Winteringham; three generations later his descendants are still in the village. This group is relatively unposed, sitting on household chairs brought out into the yard, to be photographed by a family camera, probably as a simple record of a visit. The back wall, of field stone strengthened with brick around the windows and doors, is typical of the area. A sack is lain carefully outside the door which, in cottage tradition, probably served as the main entrance, front doors being reserved for special occasions.

Left

Harry Sutton, in a picture taken in the 1930’s at Sandhills Farm, now demolished, and formerly one of a number of dispersed farmsteads built east of the main settlement after enclosure. The Suttons have worked the land in Winteringham since at least the 1850’s; they occur later in these pages. Harry Sutton is shown with a well-grown lamb, possibly a cade (orphaned) animal made tame by artificial feeding around the farmyard or even in the farmhouse kitchen.


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A Ladies’ tug-of-war team at the Hollies, Silver Street, at a ‘fun day’ to raise money for a village hall in 1973. A companion picture survives showing the men’s team. Most popular activities had come under the control of village authorities in the 18th and 19th cen-turies and those that survived did so only in a much-altered state; tug-of-war ceased to be a vicious display in which local rivalries were settled, and became respectable enough for garden fetes. This particular village event concluded with a disco and a bangers and beans supper, in keeping with the proclaimed theme of Cowboys - although evidence of appropriate dress seems lacking in this picture.


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Above

Archie Smith loading apples at Coleby House, Silver Street to take to Scunthorpe market, about 1934. The large divided boxes were piled up in the market one on another for the fruit to be sold directly from them; tipped loose into shopping bags, they not infrequently covered customers* purses, entailing much scrabbling around. Sales of a season’s crop began in September and usually continued through until the following January.

Below

Fred Brumby with a grey shire. Snowball, ai Walnut Farm, on Silver Street, about 1930. There were Brumbys in Winteringham at least as early as 1700. Fred lived with his uncle, Tom Brumby, and his brother William, and they worked Walnut Farm together; they also took out shires at stud, William was known as Wheeler, and this came from the family interest in shires- he boasted about one particularly good animal, called ‘Markeaton and Broad wheeler’. The stallions were walked around the villages from April to June, so that foals would be dropped in the following spring. Fred went usually lo the places east of Winteringham, along the Humber Bank and in the north Wolds, leading the shire from his own pony; later he took to a bicycle-Wheeler went south, to Brigg and as far as Lincoln. The stallions were not just well fed and tended; they travelled as if for a show, with caddis plaited in their manes and polished harness.


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Gate End, about 1940. To the traveller coming into the village for the fi rst time, this crossroads appears to be a central point, although both church and site of the ancient manor house are far to the west. This easterly centre seems to have been created in the Middle Ages, where a (presumably) new road coming from the south and proceeding down to the Humber crossed the road which ran east from old Winteringham towards South Ferriby and Barton. The name Gate End is problematic also; ‘gate’ signifi es a street or road, but was this the eastern end of the old main street running approximately parallel with the Humber, or a later name signifying the meeting of four main roads? ‘End’ certainly means a place or an area rather than a termination. The large scale Ordnance Survey maps of the later 19th century give the name to the locality rather than the actual crossroads.


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West End, seen from Gate End, about 1910. The thoroughly Victorian shop-front to the left and the scatter of 18th and 19th century buildings which spread out along the road now called West End obliterate all trace of the ancient settlement except the street pattern. The main road proceeds north-west, towards the older area of settlement around the church; late 19th century maps suggest that again it was the area, rather than the street, which was called by the name now used, although in the time of open field farming the arable West Field lay south of the road, beyond some small closes. To the right of the picture can be seen the south end of Ferry Lane, now closed off to the north, but formerly giving access to low grounds along the Humber Bank, and to the Haven itself.


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West End looking towards Gate End, about 1900, showing, to the right, High Flags. This latter name has been taken by two stone-built cottages, to the centre of the picture, but is derived from the raised footway. The shop left of the cottages, with bowed windows, was for a long time the post office. Most of the houses shown represent the 18th and 19th century rebuilding phase, although Earlsgate Farmhouse, to the extreme right, has a datestone of 1683 with the initials of Edward and Anne Shankster. A gap between the white cottages and the 18th century house to their right is understood to have been a public way, continuing Ferry Lane through to Market Hill, and tradition has it that a large bell was mounted above the opening, to be rung when ferries were due to sail. Along the main street the surface appears to have been freshly made up in patches with loose stone-the usual practice everywhere until the 1920’s when the motor car made smoother, unrutted roads essential. The unusual width at this point may have come about solely because of the marked slope, rising towards the south, but the end of Ferry Lane-just off the picture to the left-is also wide, and building lines suggest that this was so before the 18th century redevelopment. Could this have been a subsidiary green or market place? There was a pond until the end of the 19th century.


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A working team, in the hands of Joe Bratton, about 1930. They came from the Co-operative Farm on West End at the south end of Ferry Lane. This had been the Manor Farm, belonging to the 18th century house called the Manor; it was sold off in 1920 when the Carrington estate was broken up. The Scunthorpe Mutual Co-operative and Industrial Society needed milk to supply its customers, and had taken the smaller Glebe Farm in the village in 1917 for the purpose. The sale-one of many estate sales in the area immediately post-war-gave them the chance to purchase the Manor Farm lands, then totalling 320 acres. These were run from 1920 to the 1950’s-when the Society sold the farm off-by a manager who lived in the Manor Farm house.

Fred Thompson, taken at the Co-operative Farm, showing one of the horses in its working harness, prior to taking part in a local show. The photograph dates from about 1945.


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A group of workers from the Co-operative Farm, about 1950. They are posed behind the farm buildings, with the stackyard showing in the background. It is thought to be a potato picking gang. Gang work is probably as old as farming itself, although the new capitalistic agriculture of the 18th and 19th centuries took advantage of an increasing population to tend crops with more care-to achieve the labour-intensive ‘clean’ farming of the mid-19th century, for example-and to keep down prices with cheap labour in harvest time. Although regulated by law rather late in the 19th century in England, ganging persists in various forms on the land.


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Archie Smith, whose family worked the Earlsgate Farm, sitting on a reaper-binder, about 1948. The tractor driver is unidentified. The machine had developed from the grass cutter into the sail-reaper (whose rakes swept a convenient sheaf-load of cut corn off the platform for hand binding); thus had scything been eliminated, and the labour of harvest much reduced. Then was developed a moving canvas, and a knotting machine, so that the cutter could throw out tied sheaves, and only stooking was needed. When this picture was taken, the first combined harvester-threshers were appearing, so that harvest work which in 1860 had called for teams of men, women and children, by 1960 could be accomplished by a great machine and a handful of men.


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Robert Luther Bell, 1881-1956. Born in Winteringham, Luther Bell worked on the drains and dykes; he was a noted amateur gardener, winning prizes regularly in local shows. His sight gradually went, and, blind at the age of 28, he went away to Nottingham to learn a new trade. He returned at last to the village, where he worked as a cobbler and basket-maker, first in a cottage along West End, and later, as shown here, in a building near the Bay Horse. He retired to a hostel in Louth, where he died, aged 75.

Jack Creasey, P.C. 124. He was the village policeman in the 1920’s patrolling on foot and by bicycle. He lived first in a house on High Burgage, and moved into the new police house built next to the Wesleyan Chapel, now known as Elim House. The wooden hut which served him there as an office survived in the same garden for many years. Mrs. Creasey boasted that she need not go to chapel, since she could hear perfectly well from her front room everything that went on there; she was in any case busy bringing up her five children-Joyce, Miriam, Jack, Betty and Geoff-who had all been born within the space of five years and ten months. Jack Creasey, having served twenty-four years in the police, at Gainsborough, Cleethorpes and Scunthorpe, in addition to Winteringham, retired in 1936.


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The Wesleyan Chapel. Wesleyan Methodism was established in Winteringham about 1801, rather late for this part of Lincolnshire, and possibly hindered by the presence in the village of the Rev. Thomas Adam, (died 1784) whose special brand of Anglicanism tended to preclude the necessity for Methodist evangelism. There was a chapel by 1823 in Low Burgage. The Primitive Methodists built their chapel in High Burgage about 1837; they may have had a close relationship with a body of Independent Methodists known to have been active in 1808, and whose chapel in 1851 belonged to John Westoby, but the history of Methodist sectarianism in the decades following John Wesley’s death is far from simple; precise relationships between these groups call for more investigation at local level. The Wesleyans thrived; they enlarged their chapel in 1840, and half a century later took possession of the one shown here. Typical of the period, it is made of red brick, with extensive decoration in yellow and black, the designs drawn from various and not wholly congruous sources. It had a Sunday schoolroom on the west side, and was approached from the road by stone steps with assertive iron railings. The architect was Sir Alfred Gelder of Hull. It continued as a chapel until the 1970’s. Immediately beyond it was the Temperance Hall, built about 1882 at the cost of £200; its relationship to the Wesleyan chapel has still to be established, but given the tradition of temperance within Methodism, it is likely to have been close.


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Armistice Day Parade, perhaps 1925. The procession was photographed across the road from the Wesleyan chapel, on its way down to the War Memorial at Gate End. These parades began at the Church. Peace had been celebrated with a huge bonfire in Seeds Field-the highest point in the village —on which an effigy of the Kaiser was burnt. Although ‘flu was raging in the village, everyone attended who could, and one class member recalls being held aloft there on her father’s shoulders for a better view over the crowd; she listened to comic songs performed by an old soldier. But the war had affected the country deeply, volunteers and conscripts alike from town and village suffering death and wounding, so that war memorials rapidly became the general concern. In Winteringham, the Memorial was erected in 1921, and the Service of Dedication held on the 6th March of that year. In the church, the names of the dead were read over, and a memorial tablet unveiled there; then a procession made its way to the main Memorial at Gate End, where Private Arthur Patrick unveiled the cross. In subsequent years a tradition grew up that war veterans from Winteringham and Winterton attended each other’s procession; here, the front half of the group consists of the Winterton men, with the Winteringham contingent in the rear.


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The old National School, about 1905. In 1845 Winteringham acquired its own village school, largely through the efforts of the rector, the Rev. T. F. R. Read. At first there was only the school room, and boys alone attended until the second room was completed; this had terraced wooden seating, and was used for infant teaching. Facilities remained basic, but judged sufficient for the children of a predominantly labouring community; there were many worse schools in the area, and plenty of villages without one at all. The building’s proximity to the church, and the rector’s frequent visits, reminded everyone of the ecclesiastical bounty which had provided even this slight opportunity to become educated and bettered socially. But a stubborn local insistence upon maintaining the school’s independence of state organisation backfired, and by the 1920’s local sources of finance had proven completely inadequate; Lindsey County Council Education Committee was invited to take it over in 1921, and a new school on a different site was begun in 1927.


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Lal Bell. Born in the village in 1916, Harry (known as Lal) lived in Winteringham all his life. A well-known character, he spent his early working life handling horses at East Field Farm, Winterton. Later he went to John Lysaght’s steel works, where he remained for over forty years as a pipe fitter. A competent footballer, he was a member of the village team during a period when it won many trophies. Also a keen gardener, he was never happier than when in the garden or amongst the pigs and chickens which he kept on his smallholding at The Orchard. Always active in village affairs, he became a parish councillor, and retained his interest in later life, attending Council meetings as a visitor and raising issues particularly in connection with local footpaths. A founder member of the village W.E.A., he was a lively member of classes up to his death in 1989. An invaluable source of local knowledge, he could entertain and delight for hours with village yarns and anecdotes.

He is seen here collecting a trophy for one of his many other interests, pigeon racing.


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Mary Robinson (1892-1973). She was the eldest daughter of Thomas Robinson and Mary Ann Spencer (see page 42a), and grand-daughter of Mary Ann Robinson (page 27). Her parents owned The Orchard on West End when she was born, and she was brought up there, going into domestic service. This led her to work in Leeds, where this picture was taken, about 1912. Returning to the area, she was in service with the Dudding family in Winteringham about 1915. She married William Greenwood of Ashby, where she spent the rest of her life, and worked with the Salvation Army.

Emily Brumby (1880-1954). An unusually natural pose for a picture taken in 1893 or 94, showing Emily with her doll-which survived in the hands of her grandchildren until about 1950. She was born in West End Cottages, near the Church, and went into service in Hull, and then later back in Winteringham. She married Harry Bell about 1910, and they lived first fn a cottage on West End, and later at The Orchard, where they raised a family of three boys and a girl, the second son being Lai Bell.


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A Threshing scene, early 1950’s. Such as this was familiar in the countryside until the advent of the combine harvester; it was taken in winter, up the lane known as Cow Gang, south of the church and rectory, on the land of West End Farm, owned by Edgar Ogg. The threshing set was hired out by Mr. Raspin of Winterton, and he and his wife helped with the work. The picture was taken at the end of a long hard day, which would probably see the whole job completed, so that the set could move on. Mrs. N. Proctor and Mrs. Raspin are seen cutting bands and feeding sheaves into the machine. The sacks of threshed grain were transported to the farm for storage and later sold off, usually to Schofields, corn merchants of Barrow on Humber. The chaff was collected, taken to the farm, and mixed with chopped mangels for animal feed. Straw for bedding was baled with wire ties. A Nuffield tractor is seen with the trailer, and the threshing set was driven by a belt from a Fordson Major tractor. Another view taken on the same day appears on the back cover.


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Traingate, looking east, up the hill, with West Cross Street to the right and Wray Street a little further up on the left, just below the shop; it was then a much narrower street than it is now. Houses on the left have gradually been demolished, the present bungalows being built in the 1970’s. The house on the right of the photograph was the home of the Whitworth family for about a century, and shows signs of having been reconstructed at least once; in the back wall are traces of a substantial beam probably of oak, inserted long before the frontage was in existence, perhaps to support a large arch for carts; this demonstrates the drawbacks which may arise from attempting to date buildings in rural settlements solely from the evidence of frontages. The iron post in the foreground appears to be a sewer vent rather than a lamp post. The origin of the street name is debated, although local tradition states that there was a barracks along it in the 17th Century, occupied in the Civil Wars by the trained bands.


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Aerial view of All Saints’ church, mid-1950’s. An impressive picture emphasising-although in shadow-the rather heavy Victorian roof, and extent of the old graveyard and the later extensions. The old yard having served from time immemorial, the parochial church council resolved in November, 1911 that extensions be made to the north and west; this was quickly agreed, the new land levelled, seeded, and fenced with iron railings for use in 1914.


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A different Christmas Concert. In December 1982 the children of the village school presented ‘Saints Alive, It’s Christmas’, in All Saints’ church. This consisted of pieces in poetry and mime, written by the headmaster, Basil Freke, and included the story of Dunkirk, Peter Scott, John Mould disarming a mine, and events which led to safer working conditions in factories; they showed how a Christian tradition of sacrifice had lived on to the present day.


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Spring House, Western Green. This building is a minor architectural puzzle. A farmhouse was built here about 1740, its extent now uncertain; there is likely to have been addition in the following decades. The Burkill family eventually became the owners, and in 1816 enlarged and improved it, probably at the same time giving it the present name. Extension was a common enough feature of farm houses from the 18th into the 19th century, but the peculiarity here lies in the house apparently having two adjacent main fronts-that to the left (the north side) is mid-Georgian, and that to the right (the west) is broadly Regency. The proximity is visually disturbing, and made no less so by there being no difference in the building materials of the two parts. Internally the original plan remains recognizable, and confirms the greater age of the north front, despite what must be an early Victorian casing of pale bricks.


29

Tea at The Nest, perhaps 1895. This house, again on Western Green, was another Burkill property; the ladies sitting down, wearing ordinary day-dress, are likely to be members of the family, and a copy of this photograph survives which had been sent as a postcard from Winteringham to Mrs. R. W. Burkill in Hull in October, 1905, by Florrie Burkill, perhaps one of those shown. The maid is Lizzie Bratton, daughter of Robert and Susan Bratton of Low Burgage; born in 1876, she married Charlie Clayton in 1895, and left off working in service-so the postcard must have been used long after it was taken.


30

Mary Ann Chapman, in a photograph taken by a Hull photographer perhaps in 1883. She was born in Worlaby in 1827, and married Elijah Robinson of Winteringham. He worked on the land, and more especially, on the drains and dykes which kept the parish safe from flooding. In their home on Western Green they raised four boys and three girls; three of the boys learnt their father’s skills in draining, and followed similar callings. Mary-who had taught herself to read and write from the Bible-was widowed, and moved into a small cottage on West End; here she died, on December 11th, 1902, and was found kneeling at her own bedside, as if in prayer.

Matthew Robinson, youngest son of Mary and Elijah Robinson. The date is uncertain, but he appears to be about 18 years old. The picture has been taken in a rather unconvincing set; the floor covering is too assertive, and the backcloth appears to have been insufficiently rolled down, so that the unused cloth shows as a roll along the floor. The spindle-turned chair is at variance with the elegance of the table, and the painted scene behind is too weakly finished, whilst the camera angle threatens the sitter with foreshortening. Although Matthew Robinson has put on his better clothes for the picture - notably the splendidly-striped trousers-it contrasts strongly with the ease of his mother’s pose, and the care taken by the Hull photographer to minimise the artificial surroundings of his studio. No photographer’s name appears on Matthew’s photograph; possibly it is the work of an itinerant camera-man who travelled the villages creating a make-shift studio in whatever building was to hand.


31

A Church garden fete in the grounds of Spring House, late 1970’s. This fete continues to be held in July, as the main fund-raising effort of the year for the church, as it has been held now for time out of mind. Fetes depend upon ingenuity in creating sufficient gentle amusements to rob the patrons of their money in small quantities throughout the day to produce a reasonably handsome total at the end; the easier the challenges seem, the more takers. Ringing the bottle, as shown here, is a good example of how misleadingly simple tasks defeat all but the most practiced. The Rev. Geoff Towell and the Rev. Victor Dixon are shown with their respective wives. Mr. Towell resided at Alkborough and was then priest in charge of Winteringham as well as having the Alkborough group of parishes. Mr. Dixon was the last resident Rector of Winteringham and had been invited back to open the fete.


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An aerial view of West Farm house and buildings, mid-1950’s. Constructed in the early 19th century, the holding maintains the older, pre-enclosure pattern where the farmstead is in the centre of the settlement, and its land spread around the parish. Until the 1960’s, planned farmsteads like this one were a common feature in the rural landscape; they have since been systematically removed or heavily adapted to suit modern agricultural needs. A phenomenon of 18th century farming improvement, the buildings were planned to serve the needs of the then new, capitalistic agriculture, with everything to hand in a small space, providing proper shelter for stock and storage for fodder. Clockwise from the farmhouse itself came the yard entrance - directly from the village street-a two-storey building with tool shed and piggery on the ground floor and a granary above, a large barn for carts below and hay above, the cow sheds and shelters around the crewyard, and lastly, in the wing next to the house, accommodation for the horses. Although this was a small farm, by the time it was rebuilt the standards of the improving gentlemen farmers were expected even by the yeoman farmers.


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Marsh Lane, looking south, about 1910. An important but puzzling picture, with a punning caption added by the photographer. It was issued commercially as a postcard. The ‘Healing Spring’ which flows from the wall had long been accounted magical and certainly people came to Winteringham in the 19th century to enjoy the absolute calm of the place; it was hardly a spa town, and shared little with places such as Buxton and Bath, where ‘taking the waters’ had special significance, but still enjoyed its little reputation. But here the magical spring has been conveniently piped, and the children are collecting water for some domestic purpose, whilst the charming but primitive surroundings suggest only the mundane existence of unaspiring rural society. Is the urban photographer laughing at the village and its people? Have we here the townsman’s comment on the social and cultural distance which still marked the country then? Yet once the scene is explained, the joke diminishes. The children came from the cottages around Western Green, where lived working people whose sole reliable source of water was the spring; they are not, as at first glance appears, filling up the baby’s pram with cold water, but standing behind a child’s wooden cart near the outlet, as appears in another card from the same series. Probably this indicates that washing is in progress, many of the cottage wives depending upon taking it in as an extra source of income. The cart is marked for John Hewitt, a local small farmer; he may be the figure leading the horse. The tall man to the right has been tentatively identified as D. L. Andrew, a retired police inspector who lived in the village and was noted for his knowledge of local history. He produced the Guide to Winteringham, of 1912.


34

Marsh Lane, about 1930. Taken a little further down the lane, this shows the first farm owned by the Co-operative Society, on the right, established to provide milk; hence the silo, essential to store ensiled grass and similar crops for winter and spring fodder. Green stuff was piped to the top, and taken when needed from doors at the base. The silo stood for about twenty years, storing fodder for a herd which at one time numbered fifty cattle; how far the farm was able to secure a supply of hay is uncertain, and reliance upon root crops would have tainted the milk. Until the 1880s, much of the milk supplied commercially in towns was fouled in this way, and the rapid introduction of ensilage removed a problem which today would be unthinkable. The silo in the picture appears to be an American model, built out of staves rather like a giant barrel.


35

Lindsey Cottages, Marsh Lane, about 1910. This also looks south, with the railway track and the train obscuring the view of the village. The cottages, which appear to be of the mid-19th century, are isolated from the main settlement, on the north side of the stream which flows out at the Haven, and is usually called Halton Beck, a name which hides the fact that it carried a lot of water, which backed up at high tide. The reason for erecting the row appears lost. Originally there were four cottages, each with two rooms up and two down, made wholly of brick and tile. They were at one time called Teetotal Row; this could have been a joking reference to the life the inhabitants voluntarily led, or to the demands of the landlord.


36

The Ferry - Two paddle steamers drawn up at Waterside.

Since Hull did not exist as a major settlement until the Middle Ages, and residual evidence of a Romano-British settlement has been recorded at the place where Ermine Street came to the Humber, it is likely that the earliest regular ferry across the estuary went from Winteringham, although the site has moved according to the rate of erosion and the vagaries of the deep water channels. This picture shows the unusual event, of two vessels arriving together, clearly not at high water, and delivering their passengers across the muddy foreshore over a wooden walkway. The passengers are numerous, and some carry strange burdens - they are, it is understood, on their way to the Winteringham Show of 1907, and a band from Hull makes up part of the crowd.


37

The Haven, at high and at low water.

Relatively little is known about the Medieval functions of the many havens of the Humber bank, there being no call on them for the control and record-keeping of the greater ports; but it is accepted that much national and international commerce passed through them. This ancient pattern continued until the 1930’s, when the decline in coastal trade encouraged by better road and rail systems was brought to culmination on the outbreak of war. The Romano-British settlement in Winteringham parish had been much further to the east than the present main centre of population, and may well have been immediately adjacent to a riverine waterway; the Medieval village however was at a considerable distance from the Haven, being to the west, and therefore more inland, apparently seeking the spring line at the northern end of the Lincoln Edge. Whilst the Haven and its trades were important to the village, they were carried on at a distance from the settlement. Large river craft called here, for wool, corn and cattle, and delivered timber, building materials, coal and a variety of goods manufactured or simply purchased in Hull. In the 19th century the water traffic of the Haven added considerably to the village’s prosperity, and allowed local people closer contact with the wider world; a day’s trip to Hull took Lincolnshire villagers to a cosmopolitan city, and Hull people supplied some of the crowds for the fairs and feasts of North Lincolnshire. The coming of the light railway from Scunthorpe in 1907 was seen by some as a means to rejuvenate the Haven, and certainly coals were then brought by land to the Haven, loaded on to barges, and transported out.


38

Whether the Haven was ever much busier than appears in these pictures is arguable. It could never have accommodated many vessels at one time, and in the Humber mudlands the rapid falling of the tide after high water could quickly leave vessels stranded for half a day or more. To the extreme left can be seen the chutes for loading coal and stone into barges-about as near to the Haven mouth as was possible. The Haven runs from that point in the pictures into the foreground, curving slightly, to obscure the wooden wharfs, although in the second view the ‘Hopewell’, owned by the Barley family, can be seen moored at her berth there. Then, further up the Haven on the south-east side, was a simple dry dock, on which boats could be repaired and maintained at low water; this was adjacent to the sawmill and boatyard, whose main building dominates the centre background. Latterly the sawing was done by a portable steam engine-previously used on farms-and outside was a steam box for shaping cut planks to the curve of a vessel’s frame. There was also a blacksmith’s shop. Vessels made on the wharf near the sawmill were run into the water down a slipway to the dry dock for completion.

The view of the Haven at low water was taken by M. Barnard, ‘Marine Photographer and Picture Postcard Publisher’, of Hull, and is believed to date from 1905. At that time, the boatyard was run by Routh and Waddingham, the blacksmith was Fred Towle, and Edwin Bratton (see page 5) worked as engineer at the sawmill.


39

William Havercroft, joiner, working on his fishing smack at the Haven, about 1912. He lived down Ferry Lane, and worked extensively in house building, one group known to have largely constructed by his efforts being at Northlands in Winterton-called, for reasons obscure, ‘Chinatown’ by local people. His smack seems to have been kept as a hobby; he is not known to have treated it as a working boat, although there must have been a time when some part of the inhabitants of Winteringham looked to the river for secondary employment. In the photograph, he is attending to the caulking of the vessel; this involved stuffing the narrow spaces between the planks with the loose fibre called oakhum, and coating the joints with tar to make it completely watertight.


40

Cleaning down on board the ‘Hopewell’, early 1930’s.

The vessel was owned then by Alf and Joe Barley, and was generally known simply as Barley’s boat, although it was in fact the market boat, running across to Hull going out of Winteringham on Mondays and returning on Wednesdays. It carried provisions and cargoes, not passengers, bringing corn, cattle cake, and bulk orders for the shops; a train of carts would be lined up to meet its arrival. On Thursdays it was cleaned through, and here Norman Barley, son of Joe, is seen helping Fred Richardson (extreme right) swabbing the deck. The small girl amusing herself on the cover of the cargo hold is Sheila Kay, whose uncle, Jess Willison, can just be seen in the background. Always wind-driven, the vessel is believed to have continued to serve across the estuary until the mid-1940’s.

The Pong Shop, Waterside.

One of the most useful, but also one of the least pleasant village trades was that of the fellmonger, and lucky was the village which had its fellmonger’s shop away at the outskirts of the parish. In Winteringham, this was done by taking the business towards the estuary, which doubtless also carried the advantage of easier access for the export of hides, skins, wool and bones. A fellmonger dealt in dead animals, the dead of accidents, the milder and less contagious diseases, and those few who died of old age; he cut up the bodies- working in a cad house-and disposed of whatever was commercially useful at a profit, although he would not sell the meat for human consumption. In an age when man-made materials were rare or unknown, economic necessity called for such a trade; the hide and fat of a drowned cow, for example, were as good for leather and tallow as those from one regularly slaughtered, and sale of a carcase prevented the owner from complete loss of income. For much of the 19th century fellmongering in Winteringham was in the hands of the Spencer family, first those of Isaac, from the 1840’s, and then of Jabez, from 1882 to 1896. In the 1920’s and 30’s the business was run by Fred Giebert, known locally as ‘German Freddy’.


41

Securing the Humber Bank, about 1936.

Lowland rivers do not stay still in their beds; not content with a steady flow to the sea, and held up daily by incoming tides, at their estuaries they wander laterally, eroding and depositing, taking land away, and laying down new mudflats which may, in time, become good land. Between the Lincoln Edge and the Wolds, across the mouth of the Ancholme valley, the Humber has moved southwards during the last few hundred years. Various efforts having been made unsuccessfully to arrest this, the Humber, Ancholme and Winterton Beck Catchment Board was formed in 1931, to supervise land drainage and sea defence where necessary. Between 1932 and 1935 several new flood banks were built by, or on behalf of different landowners under the supervision of the Board; these were not enough, and even the low road from Winteringham to South Ferriby across the Ancholme mouth was from time to time overtaken by Humber tides. Another change in the Humber had accelerated the southerly shift, and flood barriers were themselves in danger. A more comprehensive scheme was put forward by the Board, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries made a £3000 grant. Permanent protection of the shore was to be achieved by building stone work and sinking brushwood mattresses into the mud; the sea was unlikely to remove them, even at its worst. The full cost was about £37,000, half paid by Lindsey County Council, and the rest by the Board-which received a grant up to 60% from the Ministry. Stone was placed loosely on the mats themselves; most of it was slag from the Scunthorpe steelworks, and it was brought to Winteringham station, where it was shot into barges and towed down river. Then it was off loaded by hand, securing the mattresses. The principle was one originated by the Dutch, and a number of Dutch workers came across to perform the task, living temporarily in wooden huts near the road across to South Ferriby.


42

Low Burgage, looking south, about 1910.

Despite the existence of now-truncated Ferry Lane in the main settlement, Low Burgage seems to have been the main road to the Haven, although it is possible that at some time unknown the Halton Beck was navigable much further inland, and Ferry Lane was indeed then the Haven road. The name ‘Burgage’ indicates a Medieval origin, and presumably there had been a planned extension of the settlement with house plots laid out along the road. The Medieval village is unlikely to have extended this far north; the earliest known map, of 1719, confirms this. The station, to the right of the picture, was built at the then northern limit, about 1906. Beyond comes a small group of 19th century properties, and further still can be seen the clustered 18th century rows, either side of Low Burgage along the Medieval building lines. The tall chimney on the left belonged to the flour mill in High Burgage. The road surface was normal for villages, as is echoed in other photographs of the same time.


43

The First Train into the Station, 15 July, 1907.

North Lincolnshire was crossed by rail from Grimsby to the developing ironstone villages and across the Trent to the industrial north in the 1860’s and although many proposals were made for lines connecting north and south along the Trent valley, no railway company was willing to undertake the actual construction. There were railway lines along the north bank of the Humber-people in Winteringham could see the trains there-but it was not until the age of light railways that a rail link was provided. In 1906 the track was opened to West Halton, the next year to Winteringham, and in 1910 to Winteringham Haven and to Whitton. Hopes of a link eastwards came to nothing, and the line remained a spur, serving a group of villages, and the Haven; the latter gave rise to further unrealised expectations, that a port of Winteringham would develop to serve the growing ironstone area. Although the North Lindsey Light Railway was formerly backed by the Great Central Railway, local passenger traffic was light-in 1914 there were three trains each way on weekdays, and this was reduced to one in 1922. Traffic in goods to the Haven was better, and farmers found rail ideal for sugar beet carriage .in the 1930’s; South Ferriby cement works also relied upon the light railway to carry cement to the main line, and it is understood that much of the Rosyth docks were made from cement from this source.

This view is the better-known of two which claim to show the first train; the other, dated 13 July, records an unofficial first train, put on to carry people to Winteringham sports.


44

A plate-laying gang on the North Lindsey Light Railway, about 1930. The junction is not identified. The gang includes Fred Hawkins (the ample gentleman in the centre). They sit on a simple bogie, propelled along by a pole, called a pose; Fred Hawkins junior holds one pose, and Ted Kirkby another. Behind the bogie, with its red warning flag, is the tool van, which had been brought out from Scunthorpe station. Fred Hawkins had a strong voice, and regularly at Christmas he toured the village with an harmonium on a horse-drawn dray, singing carols. The money he collected went to the Hull Infirmary.

Winteringham Station Staff, about 1924.

Memories of pleasant rural stations with a full complement of staff are dulling; since the 1950’s, the uniformed station master, the porters and platelayers have been reduced, stations themselves have been run down-what might then have been a well-kept, clean station or halt with flower gardens and organised yards has now either disappeared absolutely, or become a derelict, bedraggled remnant, supporting no staff at all. This picture dates from the time when Winteringham’s passenger services had already been cut, but a full-time station master and porter were retained. The group consists from left to right of Fred Hawkins, Ted Kirkby, Jack Weston, Fred Hawkins junior, J. Elliott (station master), and H. Ball (porter).


45

Isaac Spencer, a formal portrait taken at Hull, about 1885. He lived in Low Burgage, and had learnt blacksmithing in Hull; he came to Winteringham, where he worked as a blacksmith and fellmonger with his brother Jabez. He married Martha Easton from East Halton, and they had eight children; Martha died, aged 43, in 1879, when the youngest was only a year old. Fellmongering appears to have become the family’s main trade, with their workplace down towards the Waterside, out of the village; Isaac was followed by his nephew, Jabez, who was also a small farmer and wool buyer, but turned in the 1890’s to dealing in marine stores. Isaac was known for his ability to write verse, and examples in manuscript survive, although it is not known whether any were published in printed form. He bred and traded in pigs, and once made sure he was paid by an errant purchaser by means of a threat to take court proceedings, written in verse.

Herbert Sutton, about 1935.

He was third son of William Sutton and Elizabeth Walker of West End Farm. His elder brother, William Walter Sutton, married and moved to Eastfield Farm; his younger brother, Laurence, became a corn merchant in Hull. Herbert remained at West End Farm with his younger sister, Eva, and did not marry. The photograph records a good example of the farmer’s working costume, a decent compromise between the formal-hat and tie-and the hard-wearing-the working boots and leggings. Leather leggings were mostly worn by the farmers; the men working in the fields made do with canvas ones.


46

Low Burgage, about 1880

An early photograph looking up the hill towards Gate End. Nothing is happening; this is how village streets looked during hours of work. The surface of the road is of poor quality by later standards, showing all the ruts made by horse-drawn vehicles. To the left is a raised, stone-edged pavement, and alongside a drainage channel; this probably took some wet waste from houses-convenient for those at the top of the hill. The first house on the right shows the shop front of a general store run in the late 19th century by Mr. Barr. Next to it are the house and workshop of Isaac Spencer-now called Brant House-from which he and his family conducted their different businesses.


47

Low Burgage from Gate End, looking north, before 1920.

Trimmer and Andrew’s GUIDE AND HANDBOOK TO WINTERINGHAM AND DISTRICT of 1912 described Low Burgage thus: it ‘commences by the side of the Bay Horse; on the right is a free Village Room, where meetings of the Parish Council, etc., are held, and adjoining is the Reading Room (formerly a Wesleyan Chapel), with fine Billiard and Bagatelle Tables. Strangers and visitors are admitted to the Reading Room on payment of a small voluntary subscription-the membership is 4/- a year. Continuing down Low Burgage is the old Quaker’s Burial Ground in Mr. John Westron’s premises. Older inhabitants of the village recollect the stones on the ground, and the grass is never disturbed on this small plot’. In 1920, the War Memorial was commenced at the corner of Low Burgage and Silver Street, on the right of the photograph.


48

High Burgage, looking north, about 1910.

This is from a postcard used in 1911. It is summer; the weather is as should be, everyone is at work, and life goes on peacefully-at least to the casual observer. This broad street was the southern approach to the centre of Winteringham, and may well have been wide enough to accommodate the cattle markets of the past, when the road surface would have been made up much as in the picture, but without the causeys. The architecture reveals that there had been much fairly recent change, however; in the distance, where High Burgage swings round into Low Burgage, stands the Bay Horse, made of brick, not the local limestone; to the left are more 19th century houses and workshops, whilst even the stone-built Kingston House (centre) has been re-roofed and made up with brick in the end walls. More significantly, a small Victorian villa to the south of Kingston House has been built back from the road, with a garden intended for show rather than mere practicality. Even the white cottage to the right (about 1800, and the first home of the village policeman) is a great improvement on the older type of mud-walled cottage, being higher in the roof, and pantiled.


49

Winteringham Fair Committee, with the Sports Prizes, about 1890. The original picture is not dated, and no internal evidence allows precise dating as yet, although a printed Programme for the appropriate year might give details of the prizes themselves, which varied from year to year. A few individuals have been tentatively identified, including the heavily-whiskered man sitting right of centre; he is Mr. Bickell, village schoolteacher and postmaster, whose main claim to fame locally was that he had begun as a teacher in Haworth, and knew the Bronte sisters there. His whiskers are of a sort fashionable in the 1870’s, and contrast strongly with the restrained styles of the later time.

The Fair had been held in a variety of places around the village, even within living memory. By a charter of 1317, Winteringham was allowed to hold a weekly market and a three day trade fair, the second day to be the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene-under the Roman Calendar, this was July 22. Possibly the shift to July 14, the date recorded in the 18th century as the regular one for the fair, can be explained by discrepancies between the English and continental calendars, which were not removed until 1752. By the later 19th century the Fair had ceased to revolve around trade-in 1788 it had been for horned cattle and general merchandise—the sports had crept in, and were highly organised. It was held about the third week in July; there were later shifts towards the end of the month, and even into early August. Movement from field to field in different years was usual; in 1892 ‘Mr. Henry Burkill’s Town End Field’ was used, in 1920 ‘the Humberside Field’, and in 1922 ‘Clarkes’ Warehouse Field’. Reminders of the scale and importance of village shows in general before 1939 are numerous, but their history has yet to be written, and none of those which have survived or been restored adequately reflect the tastes or preconceptions of the first half of the century.


50

Winteringham Detachment, Home Guard, 1945.

The photograph was taken in Town End field at the top of High Burgage, on the occasion of Second Lieutenant Jack Wilson (centre) being presented with a certificate of long service; he had joined early in the war, risen to the rank of sergeant, and was in consequence of long service given a commission before the Home Guard was stood down when hostilities ceased. Beginning as the Local Defence Volunteers, the better-known name was soon adopted. Membership became an important morale-booster, allowing men too young to serve a chance to gain some experience, and those medically unfit or too old for active service to join with men in the exempted categories to practice in case they should have to help against invasion. Much of the activity in which they took part appeared at the time, and still perhaps appears to have been pointless; locally it is understood to have included mounting guard over a row of decaying trucks in a railway siding-as they fell apart, so did the wood and any useful contents find their way to the village as legitimate spoils of war. But not to have had the Home Guard or an equivalent would have been unthinkable.


51

Edmund Cordeaux, 1814-1917.

Edmund Cordeaux was born at Brigsley, near Grimsby; his father’s occupation is not known, but the family moved several times even whilst Edmund was young, being at some time in Ashby cum Fenby, and at another at Orby, where the boy had his only schooling, lasting but two months. Possibly the father was a worker on the land, maybe a horseman, since Edmund’s first occupation in Winteringham was as groom to one branch of the Burkill family, at the Manor House Farm; he came in 1836 or 37, and was to remain for the rest of his life. His employment altered - perhaps several times more than we can know, for the Burkills had interests in farming, milling, the corn trade, horses, and river transport, especially of coal. Cordeaux for many years bought barley for the Burkills’ maltkiln in High Burgage; he was also manager of the Liquor Vaults, in High Burgage, from which John and Isaac Burkill ran their wine and spirit business. In 1854 he married the daughter of the landlord of the Bay Horse Inn, Miss Elizabeth Bell, and moved into the house next to the Liquor Vaults. There were no children. At some time (also not yet ascertained) he became titular Mayor of Winteringham, which involved few positive duties and which, since it was an office given for life, was a mark of the esteem in which he was held in the community. He was to hold it for over forty years, during which time he became widely known in the district as a phenomenon; as he approached his century, local newspapers gave him frequent attention, and photographs of local events between 1890 and his death seem somehow incomplete if he is not included. His faith was Anglican-he was for a time a Sunday school teacher; politically he was a Conservative Unionist. His great age indeed made him remarkable; he was born in the time when the French were the greatest threat modern Europe had known, lived through a century of relative European peace and increasing plenty, but lived out his life contentedly in a quiet backwater.


52

Harry Burkill, known as Tim, about 1900.

A commonplace and almost wilful misunderstanding about rural life is that the people were usually born, lived and died within the confines of their parish; to them, it is assumed, the weekly journey to a market town was the high point of ordinary existence, a visit to the county town a personal landmark, and a trip to the capital something only to be dreamed. Occasionally examples apparently fitting this pattern can be found, and there is the inevitable truism that the better transport systems of the 19th century promoted movement as never before. Edmund Cordeaux was reported as having been to London only three times in his long life-although he went to the international centre of Hull regularly when buying corn. Harry Burkill’s life also illustrates the dangers in assuming that villagers were literally parochial. He was born in Winteringham, and died there, but meanwhile had been in the Royal Navy and the Merchant Navy. On retirement, back in the village, he lived along High Burgage, and took charge of the Reading Room in Low Burgage.

Harry Brumby, some time during the Great War.

He was the brother of Wheeler Brumby. Born in

the village, he joined the army, and was at length sent

out to the Mediterranean theatre of war. He survived the torpedoeing of a troop

ship off Alexandria, and returned to Winteringham

after the Armistice. He died in 1923 of tuberculosis,

never having got over the effects of the naval disaster.


53

Cattle going to Sycamore Farm, about 1930.

Archie Smith is herding the cows down High Burgage to Sycamore Farm on Silver Street; the leading cow was called Whitefoot. The group is just about to pass Kingston House (left, out of the picture), and is in front of an adjoining cottage. The range continued as a lower barn, which contained a butcher’s shop with carcase pulleys and a gulley for the blood to run away. The buildings appear to date from the early 19th century, and in 1851 Kingston House was the home of a cattle dealer.

Harvest Wagon model, about 1958.

This was made by Albert Robinson for the Church harvest festival; he lived in Kingston House, and made other models, utilising straw. His wagons and stacks were at one time in a number of churches in the district. The surroundings here give some idea of scale, and afford a rare glimpse inside a cottage home, where the camera rarely penetrated, partly for reasons of lighting. This picture was probably taken when the low Autumn sun shone directly into the west-facing windows of the cottage adjoining Kingston House where the picture was taken.


54

High Burgage, looking north, about 1910.

This is from a postcard used in 1911. It is summer; the weather is as should be, everyone is at work, and life goes on peacefully-at least to the casual observer. This broad street was the southern approach to the centre of Winteringham, and may well have been wide enough to accommodate the cattle markets of the past, when the road surface would have been made up much as in the picture, but without the causeys. The architecture reveals that there had been much fairly recent change, however; in the distance, where High Burgage swings round into Low Burgage, stands the Bay Horse, made of brick, not the local limestone; to the left are more 19th century houses and workshops, whilst even the stone-built Kingston House (centre) has been re-roofed and made up with brick in the end walls. More significantly, a small Victorian villa to the south of Kingston House has been built back from the road, with a garden intended for show rather than mere practicality. Even the white cottage to the right (about 1800, and the first home of the village policeman) is a great improvement on the older type of mud-walled cottage, being higher in the roof, and pantiled.


55

The Almshouses at Town End, about 1900.

The postcard was used in 1905. Although Lincolnshire had many charities persisting throughout the 19th century, the provision of almshouses, through a will or similar mechanism, is comparatively uncommon. There is no record of any such foundation in Winteringham, no cottages were shown on this site in the map of 1719, and the picture suggests that this row dates from about the third quarter of the 18th century, with addition shortly afterwards. They were probably put up after the Enclosure Agreement of 1761, but can never have been of more than middling quality. There were six separate homes, each with a single living room, a low room at the rear, and a space in the roof more suited to store things than to serve as sleeping accommodation. There was a well in front, where later the village pump was erected, and the site was on the extreme southern edge of the settlement. They must have been Scarborough property, and latterly belonged to the Carrington estate; they are understood to have been made over to the Parish Council about 1900. Were they built to house the village poor, in a position where they could be watched, or were they intended as grace-and-favour shelters for elderly labourers still capable of performing useful light work? They had no land to them, and were in poor condition when Trimmer and Andrew’s Guide was issued in 1912.


56

Click Cooper.

One of many village characters was Bill Cooper, known affectionately as ‘Click’ because of a curious mannerism. His coming to the village is a mystery, and he lived by whatever work he could find. He is remembered as always wearing a red and white neckerchief-almost a sign in itself of a daredevil nature, it seems-and lived in the down-at-heel simplicity of the Almshouses at Town End, through the 1930’s and 40’s. He spent a lot of time in visits to the local public houses, and associated with the Brumby brothers of Walnut Farm on Silver Street. His bearing may reveal a trace of military training.

Five Generations of a Winteringham family.

This shows Mrs. Ruth Robinson and her family in 1969-five genera-tions taken in the garden of her bungalow, ‘Northcliffe’, on Cliff Road. The group includes Mrs. Ruth Robinson (youngest daughter of Isaac Spencer the fellmonger), her eldest son Fred, Mrs. Evelyn Green (left), his eldest daughter, her daughter Mrs. Maureen Wilson, and, the youngest generation, Peter Wilson. Mrs. Robinson was born and lived in Winteringham all her life, dying at the great age of 94 in March, 1975. On leaving school, she had worked as a daily maid at Mill House on High Burgage for Bates, the miller; she later went as a living-in maid at the home of Barnet Bickell, who latterly ran the Post Office. Part of her job there was to deliver some of the village mail. She married Matthew Robinson at the Wesleyan Chapel in June, 1901, and because they were the first couple to marry there, a special Bible was presented to them. The couple had seven children, living at one time at Towler Place, then in a cottage on Silver Street, and then Kingston House on High Burgage, which they had bought. Mrs. Robinson spent her later years in her bungalow, where she lived with her second son, Albert.


57

The Parish Pump

The name is misleading, since, in a settlement the size of Winteringham, a single water supply was unthinkable, and anyway a pump at Town End would have been of little use to the majority. There was a well outside the Almshouses; whether it was dug just to serve them, or was an older one convenient for travellers coming into the village and for watering livestock travelling to the fairs remains uncertain. To mark the Coronation of George V, a pump was installed; villages did not usually go this far to mark a coronation, and there is some possibility that other motives should be sought. The ceremony was performed by Major Charles Judge, a citizen of Hull who was born in Winteringham in 1841, and had risen to public honours by his long devotion to the Volunteer Defence movement-he appears not to have served as a regular soldier. Immediately by the pump on the right is Edmund Cordeaux, then Major Judge, then the vicar, The Rev. Mr. Potts. The pump itself was tall, with two spouts, the higher one (just above Cordeaux’s right shoulder) for filling water carts; this arrangement was known elsewhere, and was very useful in an age when water had to be extensively carried for agricultural as well as domestic purposes. The pump also had a metal plate commemorating the occasion. At some as yet unknown later time, the upper spout was removed, and the wooden structure reduced; the pump is believed to have been in working order about 1940, and in the mid 40’s Winteringham was supplied with mains water. There was some renovation to mark the Queen’s jubilee, although photographs taken at the time show the handle in the elevated position which invariably means there is no water actually capable of being drawn. Its future remains an issue of interest.


58

Cliff Road, about 1938.

The date comes from the postmark. Until early this century Winteringham village ceased at Town End; the old yards and backs appear to have given immediately on to the open arable up to the late 18th century, and, as has been remarked, the Almshouses were built at a point right on the edge of the settlement. But villages, just as much as towns, even if on a smaller scale, expanded in the 19th and 20th centuries; in Winteringham much of the extension was internal—that is, there was infilling of spaces between existing properties, either through the partitioning of tofts and yards, or by building on old enclosures. Then there began lateral expansion, and the aptly-named ribbon development along roads hitherto going out through the adjacent fields. The bungalow was a form readily adapted in town and village alike, and this photograph shows some of the earliest to appear in Winteringham; they may have been the first, but that needs confirmation. By later standards, they are small and simple, but to the villagers of the inter-war decades, when many facilities were only slightly better than they had been a century before, they enjoyed the advantages of modernity.


59

School Road, about 1950.

In the 18th and early 19th centuries this lane was no more than a back access for farmyards, running along the northern edge of Backside Furlong in the West Field. The school (on the right, in bushes and trees) dates from the late 1920’s, and the houses opposite appear to be of the same age; this was an example of the infilling noted previously. Nothing of the old village shows here, except the silhouettes of roof lines towards High Burgage at the end of School Lane. It is a suburban scene, with the electronic trimmings of the modern age imposing some of the first telegraph poles across the landscape.


60

Market Hill, about 1900.

As the previous picture shows, the older parts of Winteringham were built below the limestone ridge, perhaps to provide a degree of shelter, and because it was there, not on the tops, that springs broke out. Gentle as the landscape is in the area, there was a marked rise from the northern end of High Burgage westwards to what was for many centuries the West Field, and it was at the point of this rise that three village tracks came together as if to form a small green. Late 19th century maps suggest that the name Market Hill applied to the short road leading from High Burgage to this open space, but there is no clear evidence where a market was held, nor for how long; for cattle-a mainstay of Winteringham fair until the late 18th century-this area would scarcely have been sufficiently large. Possibly the defunct weekly market had been held here, and there is some oral evidence to suggest that itinerant traders continued to come regularly in the present century to set up stalls along the main streets. Whatever the case, there seems little possibility of this ever having been the site of the main market, there being far more eligible places around the settlement. The chimney of the steam flour mill on High Burgage can be seen on the right.


61

Wesleyan Sunday School Feast, about 1906.

This was taken in Seeds Field, off Hewde Lane, which is the highest point within the settlement and was often used for public festivals; those which continued after dark culminated in a bonfire, and from the place fires in villages across the Humber could be seen. But a Methodist Sunday School feast was a daytime affair, following religious services celebrating the school’s anniversary. The children might have been taken around the streets in a decorated cart, and sometimes teas were eaten in the Temperance Hall. Then, moving to the field, games were played-in this picture the boys appear to be holding bats-and later monkey nuts and sweets were thrown up for the children to scramble for them. On the back row in this picture, wearing a bowler hat, is Thomas Robinson, the superintendant of the Wesleyan Sunday School. His two daughters, Mary and Lucy, are on the front row, fourth and fifth from the left; like all the children, they are obviously wearing their best clothes, since feasts were very much public occasions. There was besides much competition between the different religious denominations; a good feast might be taken as evidence of superior following, and at the same time attract those who sought secular rather than purely spiritual pleasures.


62

A School Function, 1935.

This picture survives mounted on a card which proclaims it to be a Souvenir Portrait connected with the Silver Jubilee of their Majesties the King and Queen; it is dated 1935. Although the performers have been identified, those approached claim no knowledge of the event nor what it was meant to be-but apparently there was a shortage of lace curtains around Winteringham on the day. Probably we have a ring of fairies, dancing round their queen; how this related to the Royal Jubilee is best left to the imagination. The performers are believed to be, from the left; Gertie Ellerton, Betsy Smith, Audrey Sutton, Joan Howlett, Nancy Williams, Madge Waterlow, Sheila Burkill, Pam Sutton, Bessie Brumby, Sylvia Fletcher, and Sylvia Bratton.


63

Polly, 1957.

Winteringham Women’s Institute branch was formed in 1927, holding its first meeting on October 27th. They had no meeting place of their own, and were allowed the use of the new school. How their refreshments were arranged for the first thirty years is not known, but their Minutes reveal that in January and March, 1957, Frank Burkill was willing to make the contrivance shown here-a pram base with an added superstructure to accommodate the tea things. He worked from plans drawn up by Mrs. Brown, the headmistress, and charged only £4; whether the plan was original, or based on a more widely-known WI blueprint the Minutes do not show. Polly was kept across the road from the school, in Miss Burkill’s shed, and remained in use for some years. The group, from the left, includes Mrs. Cawrey (President), Mrs. B. Birkett, Mrs. Hattersly, Mrs. Sawyer, Mrs. Wilson, Miss K. Burkill, Miss A. Tuplin and Mrs. C. Wingate.


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Tommy Havercroft’s Cottage, Ferry Lane.

Tommy was brother of William Havercroft, seen on page 36 maintaining his boat. Tommy worked on the drains and the Humber banks in his earlier life, and like many country dwellers did besides whatever came his way to make a living; it is known that for some time he kept cattle in a field near this house. In the 1920’s he lost the cottage, and lived out his time in a wooden hut. The small girl in this picture is not identified.


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The Stackyard at the Co-op Farm Ferry Lane, 1930’s.

The stackyard was the outward sign of a farmer’s success; briefly, the unthreshed corn stood awaiting flail-and later the threshing drum. Then the straw stacks held the bedding and some of the animal feed. Often there were hay stacks too. Now, the only equivalents are usually the monstrous heaps of baled straw-and even these bales have grown to gigantic proportions in the last decade. This way has technological advance changed the seasonal features of the rural landscape. Stackmaking will be substantially a lost art by the end of the century, and that of stacking the grain in the sheaf has virtually gone already.

Thatching a corn stack at the Co-op Farm.

Albert Robinson is seen on the ladder. Thatching was the last stage in stack-making; because of the evident skill of many farm men as thatchers, such photographs tend to be looked at today primarily as records of that achievement, and it is true that a good thatch was universally admired-after photographs of farm men with their horses, pictures of a well-completed thatched stack are one of the commonest single groups surviving. The thatcher gave the corn temporary protection from the weather; he had also to bear in mind the hazards posed by sparrows, who will burrow into any straw-like surface, taking nest materials, making their nests, and stealing the corn. But other problems had been met in earlier stages in making the stack—the site had to be well-chosen, the base well-lain, and the corn sheaves placed with ears to the centre so that the stack did not become top-heavy or lop-sided. In some counties, corn stacks were reared up on stone or metal steddles, to hinder the incursions of rats; when or whether this was done in North Lincolnshire is uncertain. Most importantly, the stack had to become wider as it rose, to allow for the most economical use of the base, and to throw water off from the highest point possible, to stop it running down the sides and into the corn itself. The combination of good stacking and good thatching would alone achieve this.


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Winteringham Cricket Team, 1936

Back Row, from the left: Rear-Admiral Surgeon John Dudding, Fred Hawkins, Bernard Sutton, Alan Codling, Len ‘Tulip’ Parkinson, John Burbidge, Ralph Harrison, umpire not identified.

Front Row: Arthur Bee, Fred Peake, Charlie Beacock (captain), Lionel Burkill, Walt Chafer, Len Sutton.

The team had just won the Dinsdale Cup, playing in the Scunthorpe League; this consisted of two sections, the top team of each section playing off in the final. Winteringham won this cup in 1934, on which occasion they were given teams caps, green with a yellow ‘W’. In 1936 the final was played at John Brown’s ground in Brumby Wood Lane, Scunthorpe, although this commemorative photograph was taken in Winteringham in the field known as the Croft, west of Ferry Lane. Their opponents were Barnetby, heavily favoured to win because they had a new player, Harry Lawton, from Bradford; however, Alan Codling bowled him, and Winteringham went on to win. Lawton was to go on to play for Lincolnshire, and to become County captain. The Croft wicket was held to be quite good-as village fields went-but the outfield was bad; it was a ‘2’ if you hit a tree when batting, and, before the 1939-45 war, there had been five large horse chestnuts in the ground. A pavilion had been erected on the Croft about 1936.

A Browse around Winteringham

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