Harpham village lies east of Driffield on the southern edge of the Yorshire Wolds dip slope and in the valley of Kelk Beck, a headwater of the River Hull. It was the estate village of the de St. Quintin baronial family until the 1690s, while the church remained their mausoleum thereafter. The ‘Venerable’ Bede, writing in the early 8th century stated that John, the fourth Anglo-Saxon Bishop of York and founder of the earliest monastic site at Beverley, had been born at Harpham, hence the church’s dedication to St. John of Beverley (canonised in the 11th century).
Mostly stone-built with some 18th century brick walling.