Building in fields

There is a large and detailed mid-eighteenth century map showing the boundaries and names of all the fields in the single estate which was the parish of Little Coates. It is held in the North East Lincolnshire Council Archive behind Grimsby Town Hall. I’ve had a photocopy of it across several A3 sheets for some time. Recently I’ve tried to copy it across on to a contemporary map, and the picture above is an extract.

Although some fields had been divided and other united, the rural parish was substantially the same nearly two hundred years later in the 1920s when the estate was auctioned in separate lots. So it is not a surprise to see the way modern housing fits into the old field pattern. For example, at the south-western corner of the map, the present Laceby Acres estate occupies exactly the land which was High Field, Mill Close and Old Close.

Some of what I’ve drawn isn’t quite right, but there were an impressive number of places where careful measuring of where to draw a line took me to exactly the place where whole lines of properties back on to each other. For example, just east of St Michael’s, the way the parts of Church Meadows accessed from Laburnum Drive and the parts accessed from Cherry Tree Crescent back on to each other shows very neatly the old boundary between Chapel Field and Home Close.

The power of many old parish boundaries fascinates me. They may date back to patterns of land ownership in the Dark Ages formalised into larger territories as soon as any centralised forms of early English government arranged obligations or taxation by area. This is strikingly visible on this map. Little Coates became part of the Borough of Grimsby in the 1920s, Great Coates in 1970s, and building then took right up to but not across these ancient parish boundaries, so that suddenly they became visible to the naked eye. For example, travelling from Aylesby along Aylesby Road one can look across fields to the edge of Laceby Acres (which follows the ancient Little Coates – Laceby boundary) and the edge of Wybers Wood (which follows the ancient Great Coates – Aylesby boundary).

But the story is not yet over. Consultation is underway to create a new Local Plan for North East Lincolnshire. We are told that we need to build 9000 new homes in the next twenty years or so. Land owners have been asked to identify where they think these might be built, and something like 16000 sites have been offered. Planners now need to know which of these to include in the new Local Plan. Since so much recent building has been on the eastern side of Grimsby (from Scartho Top to New Waltham), and since access to the A180 and potential areas of employment growth are on the western side, there may be some presumption that much new building will be planned on the western edge of the built up area.

So I saw the map last week which shows potential development a field or so further west. Offers of sites exist for some 2868 houses. A new Aylesby Park could be built north-west of the present Aylesby Park across Aylesby Road. A new Wybers Wood could be built south-west of the present Wybers Wood. A new Laceby Acres could be built west of the present Laceby Acres north and west of Morrisons.

If any of this started to become real and immanent possibilities then we would need to have conversations with our neighbouring ecclesiastical parishes because the new Wybers Wood development would actually be in the present ecclesiastical parish of Aylesby, although the houses would all be much nearer St Nicolas’, Great Coates than the tiny village of Aylesby. And the new Laceby Acres development would be in the present ecclesiastical parish of Laceby; in the case, although separated from it by fields, the new houses would be as close to the larger village of Laceby as to St Michael’s, Little Coates.

Bennetts of Grimsby

This apparently unremarkable unit on an industrial estate in the parish is the home of a company which has been operated by the same family for over two hundred years. Earlier this year the local paper reported a major new contract with Tesco and commented that the Bennett brothers who run it are the sixth generation of the family to do so. William Bennett, founder of the firm, was born in the eighteenth century, and he would have begun his working life when Grimsby was still a tiny port of 1500 people.

He had, among other children, three sons. James (1822-50) married Docea Wintringham (a member of another prominent Grimsby timber merchant family) but died young leaving her a widow with two small children. Henry (1827-1905) was to be one of Grimsby’s most prominent citizens; he was Mayor in the year it was granted County Borough status and was knighted as a result. Joseph (1829-1908) moved to a large house in Louth (the railway allowed an easy commute for Grimsby businessmen) and was MP for Gainsborough for two short periods. Members of their families keep turn up in this Blog

James’ widow Docea married as her second husband the Joseph Chapman whose fortune was also to be made as a timber merchant and whose legacy paid for the building of St Michael’s; the huge angel monument in the churchyard is in her memory. My wife has followed this through and unearthed the extraordinary story of this marriage. It took place in 1859 by license in a City of London church with the groom declaring himself to be of full age (he wasn’t – he was nineteen) as did the bride (in fact twelve years older than him) but at the time of the 1861 census three years later they were living apart and still declaring themselves to be ‘unmarried’ and a ‘widow’; it would be intriguing to know at what point their families and friends discovered that they had in fact been married secretly.

Sir Henry’s daughter Hilda married Edward Cordeaux of Great Coates; it is their son after whom Cordeaux School in Louth is named. Edward was the son of the ornithologist John Cordeaux (great nephew and heir of the Richard Taylor whose memorial is in St Nicolas’) and Agent for Sutton Estates in Great Coates after whom Cordeaux House in the village is named.

Joseph was the great great grandfather of the Bennett brothers who run the family firm today, and also, we discover, great great grandfather of their third cousin Paul who owns Brackenborough Hall. It was a remark of Paul Bennett’s at the Heritage Open Day there which set us off following this all up. He said that the Hall had been bought over a hundred years ago for a great uncle of his whose health had made him unable to continue in the family’s timber merchant business in Grimsby (the moment our attention was fully caught). The great uncle had died young so the Hall had passed to a brother - Paul’s grandfather.

Doubtless unknowingly I bump into other descendants of William Bennett every time I type about figures in Grimsby’s history, or, perhaps I do so every time I step outside my front door.

Community First Panels

I didn’t notice there was to be a public meeting to begin to recruit a Community First Panel for the Yarborough Ward (which is most of the area served by St Michael’s), but now learn that only five people attended it, so I may well not be the only one who missed the relevant announcement in the local paper and the local authority’s website.

The Panel is still in formation, but the first members have established some priorities for the Ward - recognising that this was a holding operation ahead of a funding deadline and that these priorities might change as there is wider community engagement in setting them and in developing a Community Plan. The four priorities are: activities for children and young people; creating safer streets and neighbourhoods; helping older people live more active lives; and getting more people involved in community activities.

The very small amount of funding available (an initial grant has been made to Brownies in the Laceby Acres area) may not be that important in itself if in fact this proves to be the catalyst for filling a major gap in the local authority’s Neighbourhood Development strategy by having some sort of representative forum (or ‘Forward’) for the disparate communities of this particular Ward; it is difficult to think of the credibility of a Community Plan without such a body.  Following some of this through, I see elsewhere on the local authority’s website that 'the function of Neighbourhood Forums' is spelt out as 'far more than just being a user group for service providers, nor is it just about holding service providers to account - its function is collaborative, so that all parties round the table can contribute to achieving best outcomes for all parts of the Ward'.

It is getting on for a year since I blogged about what was then called Neighbourhood Management
(http://petermullins.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/neighbourhood-management-concerns.html) and it would be really good if this was taken forward. I'll go along to the Panel meeting int he middle of next month and see.  I find that Voluntary Action North East Lincolnshire (VANEL) has got even further stuck into supporting these sorts of development by hosting a new platform at http://yarborough.inandaround.org.uk/ on which it hopes a whole picture of the Ward, Community First and Neighbourhood Development will accumulate, and I ought to look into how to contribute to tht as well.

Meanwhile, Freshney Forward continues to flourish in the neighbouring Ward (most of which is the area served by St Nicolas’) and was able to act as the body to appoint members of the Community First Panel there for which there were more applicants than places. The five priorities there are: to provide sustainable activities for the full range of residents with particular emphasis on young people; to promote social well being in a safe and secure environment; work towards improving and promoting pride in the local environment; to reduce health inequalities; and to increase the cohesion of the diverse communities within the Ward, thereby improving the economic well being of all. VANEL’s new platform has been established there as well at http://freshney.inandaround.org.uk/.

We spotted this inscription about earlier forms of community involvement when we were in Stoke-sub-Hamdon the other week.

Less water, more trees

A hose pipe ban has began, and the reason why is clear from this pair of pictures of Kingston Wood by the water tower on the edge of the parish.  The top picture was put up on this Blog on 19th March 2010 when there was concern that the rising water table was damaging the area.  The bottom picture was taken last week, just over two years later.

Meanwhile, a contributor to Rod Collins' website has found this old postcard image of St Nicolas' (and of the Grange next door).  This is clearly number 3 in a series of which the image of a monument  in St Michael's churchyard put up on this Blog on 13th March 2010 was number 5 (so I'd dearly love to be able to find numbers 1, 2 and 4, and possibly numbers 6 onwards).  The bottom picture is the 'same view' yesterday.

Millionaires wanted

A ‘Secret Millionaire’ handed over £50 000 or so in Grimsby’s East Marsh area on the television last night; he was rightly impressed with quality of the individuals behind projects to support families with disabled children (which meets and was filmed in the school in which my wife teaches), to raise money for machinery to help those who suffer asthma (in memory of a child who died from an asthma attack), and to equip ‘difficult to reach’ young people in motor repair skills.

The East Marsh ‘scores’ as one of the most deprived Wards in the country, and the church based Shalom Youth project has been mentioned on this Blog before. Nevertheless it (and Grimsby as a whole) looks a great deal better than the backdrops the documentary makers chose for much of the programme on one disused part of the docks and a street boarded up ahead of regeneration redevelopment.

For me the most telling moment was when the leader of the Motor Project reacted with surprise to the cheque he was offered saying ‘This sort of thing doesn’t happen to us - usually funders come to look around, say how impressed they are, and we never hear from them again’.

I’m involved with a media project which has an outstanding record in engaging young people ‘not in employment education or training’ across the whole of North East Lincolnshire which has had a very similar experience, and I was briefing one of the Council’s Cabinet members about exactly this last week, so there is no surprise that the remark stood out for me.

I told her that it seems to me that, for voluntary groups, the level of professional application making, the time available to wait for responses and funding rounds, and the ability to respond to requests for detailed accountability thereafter, means that the smallest probably cannot access any Big Society related funding at all, the small invest a quite disproportionate amount of energy in doing so, only the biggest manage to do so by employing the specialist staff needed to do it well and systematically, and each stumbles from uncertainty about the future to uncertainty about the future.

On Friday the Council had a day ‘beginning a conversation’ about how it works with the voluntary sector in a rapidly changing climate (a climate which will include further major local cuts to come). This seems a good thing - although I’d rather hoped that the Council’s working with the local Voluntary Action organisation and its working through the Local Strategic Partnership might have made it think that a conversation was already under way. Our new Area Dean and the project worker at Grimsby Minster were both due to have been there, and I await with interest feed back from them to the local churches.

Meanwhile, the diocese has helpfully investigated how it might reconnect water just to the outside loo and external tap at St Nicolas’ Vicarage and I’ve just heard from that it has agreed to do so; such little steps bring delight enough even without a sufficient supply of spare secret millionaires.

Patron for fish filleters?

St Raphael ought to be much better celebrated in Grimsby - something which had never occurred to me before. We are already a principal home to the skill of individual filleters as well as to huge amounts of fish processing. He is certainly everywhere in Cordoba, and usually with a fish close at hand (wonderfully grasped by the gills in the top picture) from which he is able to make healing ointment. Perhaps I’ll start a campaign; it is a pity our ‘St Michael’s’ isn’t one of those known as ‘St Michael and All Angels’ to give me a head start.

Northern Progress

Henry VIII never came to Grimsby. This may seem an unnecessary statement since few people would think about the topic at all let alone believe he might have done. But a local seventeenth century antiquarian (Gervaise Hollis MP) briefly said that the King did so as part of his great Northern Progress of 1541, and from this single reference alone (it seems) romantic speculation continues to wash around including persistent references which I hear to the King hunting boar in Bradley Woods in this parish (the very boar which are on Grimsby’s coat of arms).

We went to a local Civic Society lecture in the week when the idea of his visit was firmly squashed, although both a questioner at the end of the lecture and a reporter in the local paper a few days later continued to treat it as an open question, indication enough of how attractive the idea seems to be and how difficult it is to let go.

The court records are clear and are all that is needed. His party (the 51 year old King, his new 21 year old wife indulging in sexual indiscretions on the way which were to cost her her head within a few months, the half of the Privy Council not left in London, and about four thousand retainers and soldiers) crossed the Humber from Hull to Barrow Haven on 5th October, stayed three nights at Thornton Abbey, and then three nights at Kettleby Hall (near Brigg and Caistor, the home of the Tyrwhit family one member of which was part of his household), and then on to other local Lincolnshire gentry at South Carlton and Nocton (either side of Lincoln).

The culprit for spreading Hollis’ misapprehension that the King stayed in Grimsby seems to be a nineteenth century clergyman, the Revd George Oliver, whose Ye Byrd of Grym combines as reliable history as he could manage in his own voice with flights of fancy based on it in the voice of a raven - at least this is the lecturer’s interpretation of Ye Byrd of Grym, and I’d be fascinated to follow it through. The raven gives a substantial account of what the King’s (non-existent) visit would have been like, and later writers copied him establishing the myth with substantial circumstantial detail.

The King’s only Northern Progress appears to have been part of an abortive attempt to meet and make peace with the King of Scotland at York (James V, his nephew, didn’t turn up), and to demonstrate authority over the gentry who had been on the edge of the Lincolnshire Rising in 1536 (another member of the Tyrwhit family was one of them) and the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1537.

His stay at Thornton intrigues me. The Abbey had been dissolved in 1539, put in trust with its former Prior, and re-established as a College for good works (with Dean and Prebendaries) perhaps in 1540 before his visit (the date on its seal) or in 1541 after his visit (the date on its Charter); the College, discussed in this Blog before, survived through his reign but was dissolved in 1547 as soon as his reign was over (when it was the Tyrwhit family which took the land).

What was it like staying at a recently dissolved Abbey with some of its former members? Was the King simply using a base for work (the Privy Council met each day he was there)? Did his stay help inspire, develop or secure the College foundation? Was it his personal interest which made him chose to visit (it certainly provided protection only as long as he lived)?

The picture was taken at some of my wife’s family graves in Aberdeenshire in August.

Kali's song

We’d wasted five weeks waiting,
our feet festering in filth.
mired in mud in the middle
of Grimsby, grimly grounded.

Now, let loose, we laugh aloud
on the gulls’ moor’s mounds, mounted
on elk-back, bounding breakers,
our bow’s beak set on Bergen.

I’ve come up with this version of the earliest poem to mention Grimsby. It comes from the twelfth century Icelandic Orkneyinga Saga, the history of the Jarls of Orkney. We have been reading everything from this to the contemporary poetry of George Mackay Brown - we take our holidays that seriously! It was fun stumbling on a reference (albeit not a totally complimentary one) to our home town.

The original has what I learn are called ‘kennings’, almost crossword clues. So, instead of ‘sea’ we get something like‘the moor of the gulls’, and, instead of ‘boat’, something like ‘beaked elk’ or ‘prowed elk’. I’ve very kindly been offered part of the £163 critical edition of such poetry to check, and the author of the section has even invited me to a lecture on how to translate them in her department at Nottingham University next year.

The challenge is to have an appropriate level of alliteration without artificial diction, and the kennings without total obscurity. I’m quite pleased with it so far, but we’ll have to see what perspective the critical text and then the lecture have.

The first English version (from the nineteenth century) gave:

Unpleasantly we have been wading
in mud a weary five weeks
dirt we had plenty while we lay
in Grimsby harbour
but now on the moor of the seagulls
ride we oe’er the crest of the billows
gaily as the elk of the bowspirits
eastward plough its way to Bergen.

The Penguin Classics version is:

Five weeks we’d waded through wetness and filth,
mud wasn’t missing in the middle of Grimsby:
now our spirits are soaring as our fine ship skims,
its bow bounds, an elk of the billows, to Bergen.

The picture is pointed roughly at Bergen, but from the Brough of Deerness in Orkney.

Too many churches?

This week, the local Catholic Church (St Peter’s) is expecting the delayed announcement of its closure. This is part of a radical recasting of the Catholic Community in North East Lincolnshire. Ten years ago the number of Catholic priests in North East Lincolnshire was reduced from four to three. Instead of rearranging the four parishes into three, the bold decision was made to create one unit; the Sunday Mass times in the six churches were arranged so that two priests could cover all six services if the third priest was ill or away. But things have moved on in the short time since. Now it seems the Catholic diocese will only be able to deploy two priests and St Peter’s may not be the only one of the six churches to close.

So here is a picture of St Peter (who I greatly enjoyed finding on a door post when on holiday in Ireland).

And here is a version of the sheet I shared with our Anglican Deanery Synod a few months ago about our own need to face a similar situation.

• The physical landscape around us changes gradually until it becomes unrecognisable. Some change we hardly notice, such as the slow silting up of a harbour. Some change is observable over a few years, such as the rapid retreat of a cliff. Some change is instant, such as the result of levies breaking or land slipping.
• In the past, change in the Church of England has been of the first hardly noticeable sort. In the 150 years before I was confirmed in 1974 the pattern of clergy deployment, relating to society, theology and worship changed fundamentally without any of the individual increments being revolutionary.
• In the present, change in the Church of England is of the second rapid observable sort. The Alternative Service Book came and went in just twenty years, and the number of clergy deployed in most of the parishes in Grimsby & Cleethorpes today is half the number in the Pastoral Plan of the early 1990s.
• What is hardly grasped by anyone involved is that change in the Church of England immediate future will be of the third instant sort. The ground beneath us is moving. The pressures created by the demography of our congregations, the tightening our finances and shifts in society have been building inexorably.
• The demography of our congregations is such that the presence of those who were formed as present and future members of the Church of England in the 1920s, 30s, 40s and 50s has masked the startlingly smaller number so formed in the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s, but as the former begin to die a huge gap is exposed.
• The tightening of our finances has reached the point where it costs over £100 a day to deploy a stipendiary priest before we even begin to finance our church activities and buildings; this will continue to increase in real terms.
• The shifts in society include everything from most people’s use of Sunday, the proportion of split families, a step change in individual consumerist expectations, and a sharp decline in active participation in everything from political parties to voluntary work, all of which work against traditional patterns of church commitment.
• A very significant financial subsidy from the historic resources of the diocese and the deployment of some full time Curates has helped shore things up, but very soon the combination of these pressures will mean that we suddenly cease to be able to operate as we are.
• Some people of all ages will continue to make Christian commitment, and many people will continue to look to the established church for varieties of Christian ministry, but the numbers of those committed will simply not be able to sustain anything like our present provision of buildings or stipendiary ministry.
• Some small parts of this deanery continue to operate as if change is still very gradual; the presence of a priest with security of tenure paid by someone else next door to a single church in a parish means that change doesn’t have to be faced at the moment at all.
• The majority of the deanery operates as if rapid change is enough: most places where ten years ago a priest lived next door a church in a parish which was his or her sole responsibility have ceased to operate in this way; systematic development of authorised lay ministry and alternative worship is quiet common.
• Hardly anyone operates as if the major crisis is coming, and the ugly experiences of our Methodist neighbours when seeking to bring together three small churches in the centre of our deanery is one indication of why we have shied away from seeking to propose anything bold.
• But if we were to be bold we would be doing things like uniting every pair our churches now to create single sustainable congregations in seven or eight places across the deanery which could each be resourced by just one stipendiary priest and together serve a wider area, and we would be deploying some priests directly in community engagement and mission posts.
• However we know (as the Methodists do) that the personal investment of most of us in the particular congregation of which we are part means that even coming to a common mind about which places to identify and then willingly ceasing regular worship in some others is a task which is beyond us.
• So are we more likely to wait until the levies break or the land slips, until further specific congregations become unviable or until the provision of stipendiary ministry across particular parts of the deanery becomes impossible, and make emergency plans in the new landscape only when we are confronted by it?