INTRODUCTION

I'll start this description by making reference to a couple of other websites that you'll certainly want to visit if you're already prepared to read this. They are mentioned elsewhere on this website, but both bear repeating here.

SUTTON-ON-HULL . . is the village entry in the GENUKI pages (GEN ealogy UK & I reland) .. with further links to Trade Directories for 1823 and 1892, showing names of most local trading and farming families, shop owners, village craftsmen, etc, plus county Wapentake boundaries, and several other links besides. Invaluable if you want to know this area's history better.

Secondly, here is a phenomenal site tracing the course and history of The River Hull . . in fact, a photo journey along the same. Designed and posted by canal enthusiasts of the Driffield Navigation Amenities Association, it includes a virtual cruise up the Hull from the Humber to Driffield .. and includes images of every Hull bridge as of the year 2000 ! Along with many archive photos, including the ferries at Stoneferry and Wawne .. but you'll have to search the site hard to find them.

This river, and its crossings, have always played an important part in Sutton's story. It may be safe to say that the river, and its floodings, actually 'made' Sutton. There's a subject for discussion in the pub. If anyone abroad who has family from the Hull area who wants an insight into what this area used to be like in Victorian times, this river site par excellence will help enormously, short of actually coming here. I would suggest both these sites be used in conjunction with ariel photos on Multimap. Don't forget that, when you view the photos showing the well-banked sides to the River Hull, they weren't like that in ancient times. The river used to spill over into the fields, it 'burst its banks' with monotonous regularity in winter storms and very high tides. And note the height of the fall of the tide today, evidenced by a green algae tide mark along the wharves and jetties.

This view of Sutton is neccessarily a personal one, how I found the village and my impression of the changes in the area since my coming to live in Hull in 1973. I'm an outsider, and don't perhaps view the place as do Sutton folk themselves. Many will not agree with my assessment, but the fact that I wrote this and want to help 'Sutton descendants' get a feel for their heritage must say something about how fond I am of the place. In the course of my description, if I offend anyone, none is intended.

The first thing that must be said is that, in this fast-changing world, it is a rare treat to find anywhere that still bears some resemblance to how it was in the past. That depends on how we view that past .. with the rose-tinted spectacles of The Good Old Days, or with the reality specs of days of yore that most folks were glad to see the back of. Poverty, deprivation, dilapidation, run-down homes, tragedy on a vast scale, all these and more stalked all our towns and cities. And Sutton and Hull had more than their fair share, and there's no hiding the fact that the whole greater Hull area still has all those less palatable sides to modern life to greater and lesser degrees. If the 19th century philanthropist families of Reckitt and Ferens and Needler could come back today, they would be horrified at what they could see today and maybe wrily comment at how much still needs to be done .. and perhaps at how much many local folk have failed themselves in the great fight to improve education and health.

But there was, and still is, much of beauty and interest still to see. We should just briefly remember that some of that beauty was paid for at a price, a heavy price. At the price, foremostly, of the lives, living and working conditions of those antecedants you are most interested in. Whether they were local farmers scratching a scanty living from the land, or went away and took part in Hull's whaling and deep-sea fishing, or worked in local industry or on Hull's docks, whatever they did, it was a harder life then than it is now, by a long, long chalk. Many died in the course of their work, in conditions and doing jobs that would not be tolerated now. Many more didn't live long enough to enjoy the so-called 'fruits' of retirement, and for those that did, it was penury. That was how life was then.

And the second price is also well-known .. the countless men and women that were killed and injured in defending this land they called Home, whatever the enemy, whatever the cause. However bad the conditions at home, whether in the Civil War of the 1600's, or the World Wars of the 20th century, I've no doubt that most felt it was a heritage and a home worth defending against all comers.

If Sutton is pleasant to live in now, it might not neccessarily have been like this for everyone. So, there are no rose-tinted spectacles here. It's difficult to be rose-tinted when standing in front of that war memorial, musing over the countless names of Sutton and Stoneferry men that didn't come home to the land and families they went away to defend.


THE GENERAL HULL AREA in 1973

My very first impression on coming here in the early 70's was of a land where time had stood still .. not just Sutton, I might add, but Hull generally. I came here from a midlands city where so-called progress meant unbelievable traffic, even then, with urban sprawl seemingly out of control and the pace of life getting faster by the minute. In contrast, Hull seemed to be some 20 years behind .. people were, and still are, easier going. Life was more relaxed, and yet it was obvious the more I looked around that this city and area had known hard times in the extreme .. and recently.

My first 20 years in Hull were spent as a bus driver, first on EYMS, latterly on the City Transport, but in between I also worked for the Social Services, so over a period of some two decades, I got to know Hull better than my home town. East Hull especially, and the Sutton and Bransholme areas, became like the back of the proverbial hand. The Social Services driving work meant that, for two years, I drove up and down just about every Garth, Drive, Avenue, Way and Close in the locality. I saw how it was then, 30 years ago, can see how it is now, and can track some of the changes in between. And I've sat in endless busmen's canteens and heard incredible stories from, and about, the folk that lived around here. Some humorous ... most tragic and thought-provoking.

I have a little list of the first things that struck me when I came here. They struck me because, where I used to live, such sights or impressions would have been either long since passed, or highly unusual. Some of those 'things' are with us no more, and in many respects, Hull has become much like any other English city, with the same architecture springing up on industrial estates, housing estates, and the same shop fronts in the city centre. Woolly's or M&S are much the same anywhere.

The first thing was bikes .. bicycles. I had never seen so many. Mostly on account of Hull being so flat, the area was ideal for biking. Only Sutton, on rising ground to the north, and Willerby rising a bit further to the west, had anything that could be reasonably described as a slope .. notwithstanding North and Drypool bridges of course. Bikes were everywhere, and as a bus driver, there was " .. allus one in front when pulling in to a bus stop !" Car ownership was extrememely low, and there was then still a lot of concentrated industry around Hedon Road for the big docks, and Hessle Road for the fish docks, and all the trades associated with them. Bikes were out in their hundreds, and buses had duplicates! Full-standing loads to and from Hessle and Hedon Roads, at the appropriate times, were commonplace.

Trees ! There were, quite simply, an unexpected number of trees. Tree-lined avenues abounded, trees along the main arterial roads from the city centre, it was quite obvious that someone in the fairly recent past had taken great pride in Hull, and its trees, and its parks. Hull was a tree city. Firstly, in the late 70's and into the 80's, Dutch-elm disease took it's toll, then later, various road and house-building took others. There's nothing like so many now, and Hull is nothing like as green or shady as it once was on the outskirts. The new estate of Bransholme was just being built, Dorchester Road was quite new, as was Noddle Hill Way, and there were newly-planted trees everywhere . . Bransholme should have been a green and shady place in the heat of summer by now, not the arid desert on the hill it has become. There were huge, green open spaces, full of sapling and young trees. If there are not the trees there now, it's not because of disease, or lack of planting or municipal foresight. It's because children (youths) would not let them grow. It was a common sight by 1980 to see a 5-year old sapling tree bent right over and snapped off at chest height. Kids pulled them out by their hundreds. Those kids will be in their 30's and 40's now .. I wonder if they ever miss the colour and shade the trees they killed would have given them now. I wonder if their kids know what they did ..

Traffic lights . . or lack of them. There were no traffic lights in the city centre. All main junctions were controlled by a policeman or traffic warden on "point duty". And they packed up after tea. A large portable wooden dias, some with a cover on to give shade or shelter from the worst of the weather, would be seen right in the middle of all Hull's city centre junctions, including the one at Cleveland Street - Witham - North Bridge during "peak hours". And evening peak hour in Hull then meant about 4.30pm to just a little after 6pm . . not the extended 'all-day peak' we have now. The first traffic lights up Holderness Road were at Southcoates Lane, then those at Ings Road, and that was it.

A similar situation prevailed along the other main roads . . Sculcoates Lane lights were the first on Beverley Road, then Clough Road, then Sutton Road, and so on. It was unusual because in most other cities, traffic lights were everywhere by the 60's, and pelican crossings numerous. Here they were both noticeable by their absence, a situation soon redressed within about 10 years. There were a surfeit of zebra crossings in Hull though, nearly all now replaced by pelicans. So, first impressions were of lots of cyclists and zebras, and trees. But by 1973, most of the old level-crossings of the old railway days had gone. Both Hessle Road, and later Anlaby Road, had got their flyovers, so not for me the long wait behind a queue of 300 bikes at Anlaby Road crossing gates !

Finally, the whole area had a rural ambience. I always described Hull to my Midlands relatives as, not so much a city, more an overgrown market town that happened to have some commercial docks and a fishery. That was how Hull appeared to me in 1973. It was nothing unusual to be in a queue of traffic coming down Holderness Road and be held up by . . a farm tractor pulling a trailer of bales of straw. Indeed, the same can be seen today on occasion. The countryside is only a few hundred yards away in all directions, most main roads still have a good many trees if not as many as hitherto, and if the smells eminating on a south-westerly wind from the fish dock are no more, they have been replaced by the more rural scent of farmers muck-spreading, over the Humber, only a mile further away over the fields of northern Lincolnshire. At times, the city centre smells like a pig farm.


AND SO TO SUTTON in 1973

If Hull impressed me, as a place then unspoilt by the rat-race I had left behind, then Sutton charmed me. As did, to a certain extent Cottingham, and Hedon, and Hessle. But Sutton impressed me the most. I suppose I'm a sucker for that idealised village that stands a little higher than the surrounding countryside, church tower proudly thrusting above everything else, where there's a real sense of community. Sutton was and is such a place. And now, of course, it is a village within a city, totally enclosed today by the ever-encroaching boundaries of that city. It was within the city's boundaries in 1973, but only just. There was nothing beyond it. The fields at the back of the school and church fell away to the marshy stretches of the Holderness Plain. Now there are just the ubiquitous red-tiled roofs of yet another housing development stretching out over that once marshy plain. Sutton was on the edge.

What I didn't realise then, and have only had brought home to me this last few years or so, was the close association between the Sutton Village that stood proud of the wet flood plain surrounding it, and the nearby river Hull that does give it its name after all, as well as the nearby settlements of Stoneferry and Summergangs and Southcoates. Sutton seems small now because of the surrounding housing estates, even smaller since the Robson Way by-pass was built.

For many local Hull folk never have to go through Sutton village itself at all now. And many people in West Hull, the other side of the river, from the Anlaby and Willerby Roads, are just as much in the dark about Sutton as they always were, just as many East Hull folk are about western areas of Hull. It's still a city of two halves, and not just delineated by followers of the rival Rugby Football teams. There is a distinct difference between both sides of the city, almost indiscernable to strangers, but there for those with eyes to see. I roamed about on all routes all over the city and outlying villages, and picked up on these differences very early. They're more blurred now, more folk have moved around, the biggest difference being the number of ex-Hessle Road folk that were moved up to Orchard Park and Bransholme.

It's not until one delves a little deeper into the recent history of this area that one becomes aware of just how wet it once was. And may be so again if certain doom & gloom weather pundits and predictions turn out to be even half correct. Because the area is now so 'dry' .. decent roads, nice houses and gardens, large industrial estates springing up seemingly everywhere, it is hard to grasp how wet was the land we now stand on. And therein lies the secret of Sutton's creation, prosperity such as it once enjoyed, and the way it is now. It's all down to topography . . the lie of the land.

When it's realised that Sutton lies along a low-lying north-west to south east ridge, with an enthusiastically tidal river less than a mile away to the west, a coastal flood plain to the north and east, and a major river estuary only 3 miles to the south, the wonder is that it survived at all. It's only in this last 100 years that river flooding has been so controlled that the land has largely dried out around the base of that ridge, and only in the last 40-50 years that the drying out has enabled a huge amount of house building to proceed on land that was sopping wet before the First World War. I find it significant that when Sir James Reckitt commenced his famous Garden Village in 1908, it didn't extend any further to the west towards the river than the current line of the avenue that bears his name. Not only was that land mostly taken up, or about to be taken up, by more or extended riverbank industries, dyeworks, tanneries, chemical plants, and the like, it was then too darned wet ! There was a major drain running right through it . . now filled in and almost forgotten about .. that drained land right out into the wilds of Holderness. It was another 20 years or so before the land was deemed fit for 'modern' housing, unlike the older terraces closer to the old ferry crossing at Stoneferry that must have been very damp at times to say the least.

The first place I lived, on coming to Hull, was with a relative on Sutton Park, then itself new and almost treeless, and in the shadow of the high floodbank that keeps the river from doing its centuries-old duty of fertilising the land. For these really were the water meadows, the flood plain, that used to be inundated every winter. I looked askance at all the houses from the top deck of a bus along Littondale and the close proximity of that river, and its high banks that seemed to fill to the brim every 12 hours, behind us. The amount of rise and fall, and power, of those tidal flows, had only to be seen in the space of 6 hours at North Bridge for anyone to understand that a great deal of faith had been put in those floodbanks at Sutton Park .. and also of course, for the housing developments that line the other side of the river, whose access is from Beverley Road. It can surely be no accident that, historically, the main road out of the city to the north to Beverley avoided crossing that river and kept well to the west of it. Ancient folk knew the score . . because it was too wet to the east by far for any decent road to anywhere .. for most of the year that is.

The only really dry land for miles around was . . . Sutton, and the 'ridgeway' that led from the village up to the highest ground at what we now call North Bransholme, before it dips down into Wawne, itself very low-lying and too close to that snaking river for any real comfort in historical times. So I could scarce believe my eyes when house-building started on the WEST side of Ennerdale, their gardens almost backing up to the riverbank itself .. and now only separated from it by a new relief road that takes the Ring Road traffic to Beverley over the new twin bridges at Kingswood.

For the most part, because of those high floodbanks, the river is invisible even from the top deck of a bus, except when crossing a major bridge, or to those who use the river bank to walk their dogs. And I think that is perhaps why newer folk to Hull almost forget it's there .. some may not even know of its existance or former importance. But older Hull folk remember .. and anyone who ever lived around Stoneferry and Sutton Ings on the various farms and small-holdings up to the 1950's will never forget. Their children went ice-skating down Sutton Road near where Ennerdale Sports Centre is now .. they knew the pea-souper fogs and knee high waters that effectively cut that road as a link from Beverley Road to Sutton village and East Hull. I've spoken with men who remember families in basement slums in Witham between the wars, flooded out of their damp basements every Spring Tide, when the waters came over at North Bridge and poured down the road. A lot of that life-style, if it can be called that, had only just dissappeared when I came to live here.

All the old names that denote local places and features around the base of Sutton's ridge give the game away to those interested in language and history. Sutton itself is a derivation of "Sudtone", the Anglo-Saxon name, Germanic wordage for South Village or Settlement. Indeed it was, about as far South along that lowering ridge as it was deemed practicable to live safely all the year round and keep dry feet. Between the village and the river is Sutton Ings .. ings being a norse word meaning marshy ground, albeit grasslands in marshy ground. Fit only for grazing cattle, in summer. An old road leading south from the Ings was West Carr Lane .. carr being another old Norse word, from kjarr .. meaning boggy and often waterlogged. It was deemed only fit for summer sheep pasture. Holme, as in Bransholme, is merely an island surrounded by carrs, or ings, or wetlands. Indeed, Sutton itself could easily have been named Suttonholme . . it means the same thing. Or Holme in Sutton Ings .. the same way as we have Holme in Spalding Moor not far from Market Weighton.

Other local names, lanes, old farms, houses, tend also towards a watery description; witness Lambwath Road . . the site of the lamb ford in the Lambwath Stream once nearby. Here, farmers waded across with their flocks. It's a pleasant road of suburban semis now. Then there's Leads Road, that leads up the hill to Sutton itself, but nothing to do with leading anywhere. The road originally ran alongside an artificial drain or watercourse .. a lead . Nearby Gillshill Road seems to have a watery connotation .. isn't a gill a spring or rivulet. Another example, and a good one, has to be Froghall Lane. John Markham's "Streets of Hull" explains:
'Froghall was an unattractively named farmhouse in this area of waterlogged carr land. "Frog" can refer to sticky, muddy land as well as the animal : both meanings are related - and make sense.' And there you have it. Wet. Damp. Boggy. Muddy. Sticky. Except in summer, when it dried out a bit.

Another local area, between Sutton and Holderness Road, is Summergangs, now remembered in the Summergangs Road that runs through from James Reckitt Avenue. It was part of Sutton parish, though not of the village itself. Again, "Streets of Hull" gives the definition as:
Built in 1909 . . An early example of an old field name being revived for a 20th-century road. The "Summergangs" were pastures which were always damp and subject to flooding, where the cattle could only go (gang) in summer.

Finally, for the epitome of wet names, there's Stoneferry, a 14th century name. Literally, the place of the ferry by the stones, or a stone-paved ford, later replaced by a ferry. Again, Markham and his "Streets of Hull";
A rural hamlet which grew up nearby (the ferry) was eventually destroyed by industrialisation. In 1896, Thomas Blashill remembered .. "Sixty years ago, Stoneferry still retained its old world air and much of the quietude of a Sunday afternoon. There was amongst the Stoneferry folk something like a family relationship evidenced at times of real sorrow and rejoicing. At a wedding, the whole hamlet had outdoor sports and indoor feasting.
Markham goes on to comment that Blashill also recalls that "the road leading from this rather secluded community to Hull was, at times, almost impassably muddy."

I'll say it was. Stoneferry was indeed very wet . . and only in this last 40 years has dried out enough to get modern roads, and by that I mean 'dry roads', a new double-lifting bridge to replace the old and narrow swing bridge that replaced the ferry, and industrial estates, petrol stations, etc. And very busy roads . .. I drive up and down them now about 6 times a day ! When I first moved here, the joke was that Stoneferry flooded so often, and was so wet, that folk that lived hereabouts had webbed feet ! I can believe it. Dairy farming on this land must have been a nightmare. And when we get fog, we get fog . . soup !!

Now, I could take a stranger from the lower end of James Reckitt Avenue, up the avenue towards Sutton and onto Sutton Road, then across and up Holwell Road onto Bransholme, and he would never guess that the area was once so wet. I can hardly believe it myself at times, and the wonder of it is that most of the draining, road improvements, new building, has all been done since the 1950's. During the war, the area was deemed so remote, so inaccessible, that just up Frog Hall Lane from Sutton Road was the Hull Isolation Hospital .. locally known as the Fever Hospital, nothing more than a motley collection of prefabs and wartime nissan huts for those unfortunate enough to be stricken with TB or polio. All around were rough grasslands, perhaps less prone to flooding than they once were, but still very damp in winter. A great place to recover from TB, I would not have thought.

As with any wet areas .. ask the folks of Norfolk and the Fens . . it must have been cold in winter, really cold, a damp cold that locks the bones, and a cruel place for rheumatics. Hard folks, they must have been, that lived around here. And they may have to be so once more, if the weather reports are right. The word is going around that this area may be subject to flooding once again. The area around the base of Sutton's ridge itself hasn't flooded in 60 years to my knowledge, so what the future holds is anyone's guess. It may soon be time to go and find me' wellies !!

My general impression is that, even in places a little drier, like Summergangs, the grassy meadows around Sutton's ridge sat on a spongy top soil, or even peat, that itself floated on a very high water table. I suppose the nearest comparison for likeness is that this area, before it was drained and industrialised, would have been the north-east of England's equivalence to the Somerset Levels in the south west . . always marshy, often wet, frequently under water . . and salt water at that. A large area of Somerset is still the same, now recognised as an area of scientific importance where the ancient use of many dykes, ditches, tidal sluices, help to maintain a water level at just the optimum for a balance between farming, nature conservation and historical accuracy. So not just around Sutton, but large areas of Holderness would have been similar, with small hillocks or imperceptably raised areas of reasonably dry ground would always find some habitable use by poor folk scratching a living from the wetlands around, where the easiest form of travel would be a boat of some sort of scull or skiff. And a 'meat diet' meant duck every night !


AND SO TO SUTTON TODAY

So that gives a sort of summary of the topography local to Sutton, it's 700-year-old brick built church atop a south-facing slope, not high enough to be called a hill but more of a 'rise', an old village that still retains it's old charm of narrow and slightly twisting streets, locally made red pantile roofs, and luckily with enough large trees and greenery to be shady in the heat of summer. Along with the several old timbered and half-timbered cottages that have survived long enough to be the desirable and expenive modernised dwellings of today, there are still several of the 'big houses', Georgian to Edwardian stock, to remind us of an age when the well-to-do of Hull, the shipowners, stockbrokers and monied folk built their houses away from the smog and smoke and could take the train in and out of the industrialised seaport every day. Some are now residential homes for the elderly, others fulfilling other new roles as flats. Few are still in private 'family' hands.

But the church of St James the Greater is Sutton's real glory, full of ancient mystery and wonder, early English architecture, the most ancient-of-ancient fonts, and more besides, as well as an almost still-complete churchyard. I say almost, as there have been the inevitable losses or damage to stones and monuments due to isolated acts of vandalism. Some have been removed for safety, others just broke, or fell in various storms. But to all intents and purposes, it is a complete and well-kept, leafy churchyard with many mature trees and a small nature reserve in its own right, if surrounded by urban hub-bub. In addition, and fortunate for Sutton folk and their descendants interested in genealogy, some thoughtful soul/s took steps a while back to make a record of all the stones then still left standing, and this excellent record of Sutton's Monumental Inscriptions are now in the care of Merrill Rhodes along with the rest of Merrill's wonderful exhibition of the history of the village, and all available to view on Friday afternoons in the Old School Exhibition. Hopefully, one day, if someone can be coaxed, conscripted or cajoled into typing it all out onto a word-processor, it may appear on this website.

For it was that 'Old School', almost next door to the church and churchyard, that closed nearly 30 years ago, and local children now attend new(er) schools on nearby Bransholme. It's true that Bransholme does cast a shadow over the old village, but no more so than any other English council estate on the outer edge of a city and in close proximity to ancient buildings and communities. And only then because of the high crime and general deprivation in the wider area of the estate itself.

The railway that once linked the village in bad winters to Hull, and good summers to Hornsea, has long since gone, the old trackway now a bridleway and cycle path. Part of the old station and sidings have given way to a children's playground and small park, encircled by Robson Way, effectively the village by-pass.

Also gone in recent times are the many hundreds of 'prefabs' that once lined nearly the whole length of Sutton Road, from the river bridge to Leads Road, all along the southern half of Frog Hall Lane, and a good bit down West Carr Lane. Also gone are all the tall and stately 'Jersey Elms' that once lined both sides, all victim to dutch elm disease in the 1980's. In fact, prefabs sprang up all over the city, thousands of them. I can just recall some of them still being there in 1973. No doubt many current residents on Bransholme had their first home in those prefabs. In it's time, that of the post-war housing shortage that coincided with a baby-boom, the Sutton Fields prefabs formed a mini community all of its own, with its own school, chapel, etc. These were desperate times, thousands of Hull houses had been damaged or totally destroyed, land was in short supply, so the detached and cosy prefabs were built on newly drained land. The river floodbank was deemed good enough. Even so, there was occasional minor flooding. I'll bet the gardens were good, though. A couple of years of turning the ground for spuds should have produced a reasonable, tilthy loam, albeit one that would revert to clay given the chance of a good soaking. One thing that has survived into the 21st century are the allotments at the base of the railway bridge on Sutton Road, on the corner of Leads Road. Judging by the height and colour of the runner beans I see when driving by in mid-summer, they can't say there's much wrong with that soil.

All in all, it's still a very pleasant place to live, if a trifle busy with modern traffic, well served with buses and local shops, two pubs and a post office, and other neccessary modern amenities. Traffic jams are frequently seen, especially right outside St James' church on summer Saturdays when a wedding is in progress, as wedding cars, guests cars, other shopping traffic and a couple of double decker buses all vie for position to get through the narrowest part of Church Street all at once. Even so, given the chance, most other Hull folk would jump at the opportunity of moving to this slightly higher ground and part-taking in the still-prevailing air of affluence and gentle nobility the village still retains. It still seems a little remote from the rat-race of modern life, a world apart, still detatched from Hull and yet a part of it, and altogether a more leisurely place to take a Sunday afternoon walk. And such a walk is recommended .. full of interest and history at almost every turn.

And it's worth recording that Sutton also hosts a Civic Society, dedicated to both the preservation of its heritage and the education of local folk that they have a heritage worth preserving. An uphill task most of the time. I'm an outsider and can see it's a richness well worth preserving .. but sometimes, folk can be a little too close to the wood to see the trees. Luckily Sutton still has plenty of trees, and presents a green prospect from a distance, unlike the surrounding area almost denuded of them. But don't get me going on that subject again. By and large, trees perform a far better service to this planet than humans do, and are perhaps more worthy of their place upon it. I would make the killing of a tree a capital offence !

Amen.