Beverley >
Sep 2024
beofor beaver + licc Old English streams. Population - 30,587.
UK
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England
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East Yorkshire
Sep 2024
We're off to see Beverley Westwood. Didn't you go to school with her?
No, not that Beverley Westwood, although there's bound to be one living here, probably. These are open pastures, actually, that greet you on the way into this equally attractive East Yorkshire market town.
Just about within spitting distance of Hull, there's no sight nor sniff of the fishing industry for it looks not a little unlike this.
This after negotiating the single-file traffic through North Bar that keen Google™rs will be delighted to hear you can get through, lights permitting.
Six hundred, yes, 600 acres of common land to the, well, west of town although courses of the horse-racing and golfing varieties mean it's not all access all areas.
Bang in the middle with cows for company is the Black Mill, once doing just that in the early 1800s thanks to the wind whipping in off the North Sea.
It's main function these days is as a local landmark, the internals long since dismantled, and was inexcusably overlooked making for a reason to return to Beverley at some point.
That, however, won't likely be for a few years and may by then involve an organised coach trip to Beverley's famous Saturday Market complete with renditions of "Charlie had a pigeon, a pigeon, a pigeon..."
Brown Historic Market Town signs can go either way but the ones to Beverley are worth following. The archaic names of the lanes that lead off in most of the directions hint at some history.
Hengate, Sow Hill Road and Dog and Duck Lane suggest what once went on although it's not known what used to happen down Old Waste?
Saturday Market isn't just what it is, it's the name of the thoroughfare on which it happens and it still gets the coachloads in.
These people are lucky enough to be able to pop to the Post Office™ today but there'll be no parking or even sitting here in two days' time.
Bob, the way, is reliably informed that not everywhere has a Jigaw™ so Beverley, evidently, is a little bit that kind of place.
The Beverley 'Special' didn't quite deliver but the excitement of a random tandoori in a random UK town always does.
Saturday Market isn't to be confused with the smaller Wednesday Market unless your calendar is three years old and three days out.
It's a short hop between the two through an agreeable area of repurposed retail and the markets have been operating since the late 1200s, they say.
Some old archbishop or other granted permission for haddock from Hull and fresh corn from the fields, yum yum, to be traded in town for a toll.
The hipster stallholders of today, however, are more interested in, get this, Yorkshire coffee. None of your Yorkshire Tea™ nonsense although they probably will be growing their own here in five years' time, right Greta?
The Spoons have a tradition of naming their pubs based on the history of the town or the old building they invariably inhabit. The inevitable offering in a town of this size is called the Cross Keys.
There are no awards for their nearly-out-of-date ale but the Director of Contrived Waterhole Naming gets a routine (1/5) for simply lifting the name of the original, 18th-century pub with rooms.
Not all of them were went into but other options are available. The King's Head serves grub from a sizeable menu with your Madrí™ while the Angel's offerings are a bit craftier with Harrogate Town vs. Doncaster Rovers on a big TV outside.
The old archbishop would have presided over the parish presumably from an impressive HQ. St. Mary's is impressive enough but it's overshadowed by Beverley Minster and no, we didn't go to school with her, neither.
Yes, Beverley has a minster, like you didn't know already, a moniker that's a millennium-old and more. The Gothic construction saw the Black Death come and go and when Henry VIII invented the word 'dissolution', the walls were spared since there was no bishop and the monks had long gone.
Forking out a bit more for the first night of your holiday means shunning the more usual Premier-like lodgings and a multi-storey car park that, sorry Beverley, could just about be anywhere.
Here is right opposite St. Mary's but not quite as old as that or the minster and a member of staff will inform you that Dick Turpin stayed here overnight, yeah right. He's what Mary Queen of Scots is over the border to the old-inn trade here in Yorkshire even when there's a modern extension round the back.
Smart enough with some crafty, local brews in the bar, the lounge is starting to fill at check-out with ladies what lunch meaning Beverley, definitely, is a little bit that kind of place.
Meanwhile, back at the minster, it's quite a piece of work and larger than several of the country's cathedrals but what's the difference?
They're both just big old churches but cathedrals are designated seats of a bishop so what's the deal with York Minster? We've seen their bishop on the news.
Officially it is a cathedral but they wouldn't be called that until well after Willie Conker when he brought the Latin with him. Many places of Anglo-Saxon significance kept the corruption of the word monastery so with that cleared up, what's an Abbey then?
There's a little too much thought going into this, maybe, but there's only so much you can say about a vaulted, Norman ceiling and a stained-glass window?
Other than there's another one that looks like this with the lights on.
SlyBob honestly aren't that interested in what normally goes on inside of these places but these intimidating constructions and reverential interiors are often worthy of a nod and a 'good job'.
No, this isn't a close-up of today's congregation, you'll find this guarding a small car park right next to the minster.
It's the work of local artist Fred Elwell and no, SlyBob's never heard of him, neither. Hardly a household name, he was considered worthy enough by the Royal Academy and George V, no less, for whom he was commissioned to paint a portrait.
Brief spells in London and Belgium aside, he spent most of his life in Beverley and after marrying his best friend's well-to-do widow, there were no distractions to his oily interpretations.
If you stop and look, he's absolutely everywhere although the scaffolders nearly didn't notice this one back in Saturday Market.
A bank manager, a surgeon and a farmer walk into a pub, isn't the title of this, it's called Four Friends, actually, with the fourth one a landlord presumably of the pretend pub, which is a restaurant, really.
There are 20-odd of them dotted around town and the reproductions make up the Elwell Trail. Everyday life in East Yorkshire, particularly portraits, were his speciality and there's one of a lady with very little on above a shop, somewhere, which was probably considered 'everyday' by them Edwardians, eh?
Beverley Swingers? No, we think we'd definitely remember if we went to school with her.