Today’s photo. taken at Thorngumbald Marsh, east of Paull, shows a small blackthorn bush with one of the Humber’s four ‘set-aside’ sites beyond. Blackthorn flowers in February before coming into leaf in Spring, an impressive mass of blackthorn bushes in flower may be seen at Horkstow Bridge, near the early 19th century single-span suspension bridge over the River Ancholme south of South Ferriby. Blackthorn would have been a native shrub across the River Hull floodplain before urbanisation.
Meaux Abbey’s purchase of lands in Myton berewick from Maud Camin extended the Abbey’s landholding portfolio on the fertile estuarine alluvial soils beside the Estuary. By the 14th century it and Thornton Augustinian Abbey in north Lindsey owned most of this linear belt each side of the Estuary. Sailing up the Humber in the 1300s on either bank would have been seen huge flocks of sheep grazing, the natural vegetation having been tamed down. Exporting wool, mostly to the Low Countries, was by then England’s main trade. The east-coast trading settlements were well situated to service this trade, the expanding settlement at ‘Wyk in Mitton’ being no exception. In fact in the 1290s this settlement was acquired by King Edward I, as was part of the Myton berewick, so henceforth the name King’s Town (Kingston) upon (beside) the River Hull (Hull) applied. It then follows that the modern single word name is faulty, Hull being the name of the River historically. Is Richmond on Thames called ‘Thames’, is Barton on Humber called ‘Humber’, is Stockton on Tees called ‘Tees’? Probably the most accurate name is that used in a medieval document ‘Wyk juxta Hull in Mitton’. Should we start a campaign, or find some other way to waste time?
It is likely, but not proven, that Mitton berewick would have had a grange and an early chapel of ease.
(to be continued).