Ive known Swine Church since 1953. Across the fields and the Golf Course it was a special landmark . As five year old I had to stand tall to spot it from my bedroom window as my head barely reached the glass of the window , not double glazed , but in the very latest Crital frames my father was so pleased with . ‘I shall never have to paint the window frames’ he said to my mother as they planned their build with Mr Sewell , the builder from the village , Sutton Village that is, or as we proudly say with Thomas Blashill “Sutton in Holderness”.
So in 2025 I finally get to see the church that was my familiar landmark . It was locked, we could have got the key from the name on the outside board , but I also wanted to revisit my own church , St James in the village , and look at Church Mount again through the shrubbery.
There was wonderful Holderness waiting to be rediscovered as we drove to Sunk Island , Patrington for the Queen of Holderness,and Hedon for the King and enjoyed the refurbished Trout Inn at Wansford. Was ever a place called Emmotland , never heard of that one until we got back home and a friend told us of all the great fishing trips he used to have there. Not so for me, my father fished the grayling from Hempholme certainly but mostly the Yorkshire Derwent near Kirby Moorside. I had three days of nostalgia in August then , and only an hour from home, staying in a huge house at Beeford with all 3 generations of our Filey Family . Reuben drove us to another church I had never visited, the welcoming St Augustines Skirlaugh. I’d been to that village many times with mother when we renewed her Blue Bage at the East Riding Offices. I had cycled to Hornsea with schoolfriends , the back way through Sutton to Benningholme , that land of ditches and low hedges and fields and fields of potatoes and wheat and field beans , no traffic and innocent adventure .
The East Riding villages are still delightful , we spot the gable ends built with the feather pattern of the bricks , the local way, remember to train to Hornsea , also spotted from my bedroom window , the steam trains and the exciting day when we saw our first Diesel.
My perspectives have changed . I rarely go more than 10 miles from our cottage these days, except the monthly visit to the Eye Hospital with Hull sister when she has her injection.I look from the train window from Filey and still spot lovely cottages, trackways and becks, and on a good day Herons and Little Egrets near Arram , and new crops like Miscanthus , the Christmas tree plantation has gone now near Nafferton , but the rabbit warren certainly hasn’t. I always sit on the left hand side of the coach form Filey To Paragon and the right hand side going home .
I was unable to use my childhood purchase of a secondhand copy of Palgraves Golden Treasury , a beautiful bright turquoise binding . The book is dropping to bits, much written in from grammar school with many of the poems with little marks in pencil above each word showing stresses.I haven’t binned it .It has string round it . Last night I couldn’t sleep and had just finished the brilliant book by RamornaAsh . She talks much about Gerald Manley Hopkins so was trying to find a poetry book at 4.30 this morning, and eventually found one poem by him in my Mothers “A Modern Anthology “from 1924. I have given away most of my books now for friend to sell for for charity on a stall outside his house on the Cleveland Way , but just kept a newer Palgrave (no GMH of course , not published then ). What a lovely surprise , had never opened it before but inside was my father’s name , and it had all his pencil notes. What treasure for me.
Reuben and I like the Jesuits, and GMH
and we like Iona , both lauded in the book “Don’t forget we're here for ever “
this book has changed my perspectives .
