Exploring Yorkshire’s quiet corner – with unspoilt coastline and England’s loveliest Georgian town
Yorkshire is justifiably proud of its many and varied glories: York, the Dales and the Moors, the delights of Whitby and Scarborough.
But there is one part of God’s Own Country that Yorkshire likes to keep to itself, where you can meander along the quiet streets of England’s loveliest Georgian town, admire in peace some of our most beautiful churches, explore tranquil villages and wander lonely as a cloud along 50 miles of gorgeous, unspoilt coastline.
There are no motorways bringing the masses to East Riding, just the slender Humber Bridge, the world’s longest suspension bridge when it opened in 1981, from where you drop down into Kingston-upon-Hull.
It has a breezy maritime air and despite heavy wartime bombing the core of the Old Town survives, gathered around what claims to be England’s largest parish church, Hull Minster, dating from 1285 and the first major building to be built of brick in Britain since the Romans.
Close by is the narrow, winding cobbled high street, swept by sea breezes and lined with smart red-brick merchant’s houses fronting warehouses that back on to the River Hull. Here is the birthplace of Hull’s most treasured son William Wilberforce, who devoted his life to abolishing slavery. His fine Georgian house is now a museum in his memory.
Housed in a futuristic structure down on the waterfront is the world’s only submarium, the Deep, a subterranean aquarium boasting thousands of varieties of sea creature observed from Europe’s deepest viewing tunnel.
Six miles north of Hull is the East Riding’s county town of Beverley, described by John Betjemen as “one of the most beautiful towns in England”. Its ancient streets, lined with gabled black-and-white buildings and handsome Georgian houses, follow the old courses of streams where beavers once lived – Beverley means ‘beaver meadows’.
The present Beverley Minster was built over 200 years from 1221 to 1425 and incorporates all three phases of English gothic architecture, Early English, Decorated and Perpendicular, resulting in what is arguably Britain’s loveliest gothic building. Inside, the Percy Tomb is considered the finest surviving example of decorated stone carving in the country, while by the High Altar stands a rare frith-stool, or sanctuary chair, given to the original minster by the Saxon King Athelstan in 937.
The parish church of St Mary’s, begun in 1120 by the town’s merchants, is famous for its intricately carved pillars, on one of which is a carving of a rabbit dressed as a pilgrim, said to be the inspiration for the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland.
North and west of Beverley are the Yorkshire Wolds, Britain’s most northerly chalk hills, a delightful, undulating landscape dotted with small market towns and home to the world’s oldest horse race, the Kiplingcotes Derby, first run in 1519 as a way for the local gentry to exercise their horses after the winter.
At the heart of the Wolds, set in parkland designed by Capability Brown, lies Sledmere House, home of the Sykes family. The glories of this eccentric late-Georgian house, remodelled in Edwardian style after a fire in 1911, include the Library on the top floor with a decorated ceiling based on the vaulted baths of Rome and a Turkish Room lined with dazzling blue tiles from Damascus.
To the east, the Wolds come to a dramatic end at Flamborough Head where chalk cliffs plunge 430 feet to the sea. On the northern side of the headland the Bempton Cliffs form the largest breeding ground for birds on the English mainland and are a great place for puffin watching.
There are two lighthouses on the headland, one from 1806, still operational, and a chalk tower 80 feet high, built in 1674 and the oldest complete lighthouse still standing in England.
In the Norman church of St Oswald in Flamborough village you can find the gruesome tomb of Sir Marmaduke Constable who fought at the Battle of Flodden in 1513 at the age of 70 and died, so the story goes, after swallowing a toad while drinking a glass of water. The toad is said to have gnawed its way out by eating Sir Marmaduke’s heart, a cautionary tale graphically illustrated on the tomb.
North of Flamborough Head, six miles of golden sands lead to the Victorian resort of Filey; to the south lies Bridlington, Old and New. Old Bridlington, two miles inland, clusters around the Priory, the grandest church in Yorkshire after York Minster until dissolved by Henry VIII. All that survives is the nave and the Norman gatehouse, now a museum. The more lively seaside resort of New Bridlington congregates around the harbour and is renowned as the largest lobster port in Europe.
Inland from Bridlington is Boynton Hall, former home of William Strickland, who introduced the turkey to England after a voyage to the New World. A little further west, in the churchyard at Rudston, is the tallest standing stone in Britain: 27 feet high with the same length again beneath the surface, while to the south is Elizabethan Burton Agnes Hall, many people’s idea of the perfect country house. Highlights include a Jacobean oak staircase, an ornate Great Hall and a barrel-vaulted Long Gallery.
South of Bridlington lies Holderness, an area of flat marsh drained in the Middle Ages to form rich farmland dotted with small villages. Rising out of the open fields is another fine Elizabethan house, Burton Constable Hall. It is home to the skeleton of a whale, washed up on the coast nearby in 1830, and described by Herman Melville in his book Moby Dick.
The Holderness coastline, the fastest eroding stretch of coast in Britain, is mainly low cliffs and miles of wide sandy beach punctuated by the small resort towns of Withernsea and Hornsea. Furthest south is Spurn Head, a thin spit of shingle and sand that juts out three and a half miles into the mouth of the Humber.
You can either walk or take the Spurn Safari, a specially adapted military vehicle, to the lighthouse at Spurn Point, which now serves as a visitor centre for the surrounding nature reserve, run by the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust. The view from the top of the lighthouse of ships sailing in and out of the estuary is, like the East Riding itself, glorious.
Where to stay
White Lodge Hotel, Filey: Elegant, family-run hotel on Filey’s clifftop Victorian Crescent, with spectacular sea views from most rooms. Doubles from £159.
King’s Head, Beverley: Georgian pub with stylish accommodation overlooking Beverley’s historic Saturday market square, Doubles from £80.
