SUTTON & WAWNE MUSEUM & FAMILY HISTORY RESOURCE CENTRE, inside THE OLD SCHOOL, SUTTON on HULL, EAST RIDING OF YORKSHIRE, ENGLAND

~ ancient villages linked by our two churches & family history ~

it's nearly 10 inside The Old School ... time to open up!

CLICK TO SEE our new Sutton and Wawne booklets ~ separate potted history of each village ~ A5 format ~ Sutton 12 pages = £2 : Wawne booklet 8pp = £1.50

Site Last Updated: 17:30 April 20th ... next hoped for opening, Friday 25 June 2021 ... ?!?
If then. If all goes well. It will if the majority of folk behave and stop spreading Covid about.

There is an explanation of this background map further below, scroll right down, and use F11 for full screen

WELCOME TO ALL OUR WEBSITE VISITORS

A very warm welcome to all our visitors,
and especially to all those
ex-Sutton & Wawne folk who
may have long since left these 'gentle climes'
for other abodes in the far corners of this globe.

With special greetings for those of you now settled
in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa or
the USA, or even anywhere within our Commonwealth and
this great world-wide family of English-speaking peoples.

For all of you who were born, worshipped
or were married here in Sutton or Wawne,
or have loved ones resting here -
to you all, wherever in the world you live now,
an especially warm welcome indeed.
We're pleased you have discovered us -
do enjoy.

If you or your kin were ever married or worshipped at
Sutton or Wawne, you will love our 'online-DVD' for just £5. It features
both churches ... see EVENTS button below for more details.

Photos of all 14 CWGC War Graves in St James' churchyard
were posted on the appropriate page,
added for Armistice Day back in 2009.
Photos of the further 5 Family War Graves and Memorials were
added in time for Armistice Day in 2014. A database of the 420+ men
on all of our memorial plaques was started in 2014, and completed in time
for the 2018 anniversaries. The new plaques can be seen on the War Memorial ~

The vases of daffodils are to cheer all ex-pat Sutton & Wawne folk
who are in need of some cheering up right now.

Clicking the buttons further below will start or stop a short peal
of Sutton's bells. They were added at Christmas, 2003.

May you all enjoy your visit
and brief stay with us.
We hope you will call again.
And of course, if you have a Family History
query we can help with . . . we're here to help !

or the churchbells

MAPS - to find us

our new 12 and 8-page
Parish Booklets

£2 each - for our funds
OUR MUSEUM BROCHURE

The front, and rear pages are on the left:
and the inside panes are on the right.

The background map shown here has a full explanation right at the bottom
of this page; scroll right down, and use F11 for full effect.

The Background map of The Groves that was here on this page,
along with a lengthy explanation of the history of this former
Sutton parish area, is now on a dedicated page of its own.
It can be accessed by clicking . . . The Groves

This Old School was already a venue for local organisations; bcv!
eg: the Sutton Branch of the W.I. met here on Wednesday evenings,

and the local Tai-Chi club on Monday evenings.
Details of how to Hire THE OLD SCHOOL are here, and more photos showing the venue are here.

:: ____________________________________ ::

reload this page with a Side Menu .. .. if it helps you ... or dump it if not

Our website does now seem to display correctly in most browsers - on PC/laptops
Not so good on mobile phones. Some better than others. Suggest you dump side menu.

the 2 school photos above
are historic postcards of 1910

A lot of family names & contacts
are already in our Guestbook ...
Why not add yours too .. ?

we deploy a ramp for diabled access into the Old School - do shout or bang door to ask us for assistance

free Wi-Fi inside the Old School - access code pinned up in tearoom over serving hatch

Founded by Merrill Rhodes, and husband Peter,
we are a local Folk Museum & Family History Centre
inside this Grade II listed school building of 1859;
the oldest former council school in Hull
still used for educational purposes:
staffed entirely by Volunteers and
supported by visitor donations;

Press F11 to view this site Full Screen
- without toolbars!
You can also drag the menu
out of the way to the left.

Click Here also to
enter Our Museum Pages

A Map to Find Us at HU7 4TL
The little dead-end side road is
a free car park

Our area covers the historic parishes of both
Sutton and Wawne villages.

Sutton parish also included Stoneferry, Wilmington, St Marks and The Groves,
all the way down to the north side of Witham,
until the 1880s when new
churches were built.

WE OFFER HELP WITH
FAMILY HISTORY RESEARCH
every Friday 10 till 2
not just Sutton & Wawne;
ALL areas of the UK !
Donations Always Welcome!

Wawne Primary School old school blazer badge - leads to School Visits Page

We can take a photo of your child for you
in our re-creation of a Victorian School photo ?
Even using one of these Victorian iPads!

We can supply child's cap or other props - have 2 photos, one smiling, one serious!

Click these Chalkboards for More Details!

WE FIND CENSUS RECORDS &
interpretation of Service Records
ships, regiments & squadrons found;
both Royal & Merchant Navy;
Troopships & Convoys;
lost trawlers, etc

St James' Church of England School, Sutton on Hull - the boys' cap badge

We are proud to be supported by:
several local schools and the
Sutton in Holderness
Conservation Society
and many individual
generous donors.

A full list of all our existing
Friends and Supporters
appears on our Friends Page

Sutton & Wawne DVD-ROM Online

Free website hit counter

G.D.P.R. Data Protection and What we do

our website is hosted by
Free Virtual Servers

which leads to our 'Friends Page' . .

G.D.P.R. Data Protection Declaration

We can also be found on our
Google Business Website

School Visits from All Schools
very Welcome; if you can get here,
we'll entertain you !

We can also host arranged visits by
Church Groups, Townswomens' Guilds,
Womens' Institutes, Clubs & Societies.

Click the railway station sign
to see our restored station seat

You can contact us at:
admin@suttonandwawnemuseum.org.uk

This website, and all its associated pages, is brought to you by the Sutton & Wawne Museum, a Free Museum inside the Old School, Sutton on Hull.
Sutton & Wawne Museum ~ inside The Old School ~ 25 Church St ~ Sutton on Hull ~ HU7 4TL
~~ www.suttonandwawnemuseum.org.uk ~~ admin@suttonandwawnemuseum.org.uk

Sutton & Wawne Museum
Lockdown News

Work is now in hand getting estimates for some serious repair work to the end gable wall of the museum room itself. We have suffered from flaking paint and plaster for some time, and the period of lockdown, with the place never getting warm during the winter has not helped matters.

We hope to have had the work done by late May, to give us time to do a good clean up, dust down, and a bit of re-arrangement of our displays. We will keep you posted as to progress, but we really are hoping to open on June 25th, which is the first Friday after the legal lockdown ends.

In the meantime, the interest in Sutton's past continues to grow. There has been a considerable amount of interest, and several 'new' school class photos have 'come to light', along with several names of previously unknown faces, identified by their former classmates.

Memories are failing, some folks recall the faces, but not the names, and others know many names but can't put a face to them. A very mixed picture, and amongst our dozens of class photos in the museum, there are many, many blank spaces still to be filled in.

This is where I think, with the help of Facebook,
many of you who still reside in the area could help.
Click the EVENTS button in the menu to find out more.

Also, the DVD which so many of you have heard about, 'Merrill's Book' plus extra photos of both villages/churches,
is now available to view online as a download.
Email your order, send £5 to the account number we send you,
and it's as good as done. Usually, the same day.
Details on FRIENDS page or EVENTS.
It works on PC/laptop/iPad, and some phones.
We hope that folks will view this as a form of 'Crowd-Funding' for our museum. You send us a Fiver, we send you something worthwhile.

Sorry, cannot take cards, VISA, etc, just direct online banking.


The Green Album above is a collection of 100+ glass plates, the 1st volume of the Rev George Coleman collection. Click the album to go to the page to view it -- and it's FREE. APRIL 20th UPDATE : A long-intended project to sort out all of Merrill's old computer files is now complete. Quite a task it has been too, but it has given rise to a slow realisation that we had a veritable hidden gem all along More . . . . Our 2020-2021 Exhibition is still open and available to view here, online. When the museum re-opens, it is planned that the conventional exhibition of artworks and Hull's industrial working womens memories will be on show in the main hall. The exhibition comprises some 17 pages of many memories of working women in Hull, in a variety of trades and jobs, the linking theme being the headscarves they wore. Many ladies, now of 'advanced' years, were invited to tell their stories of their working life. Over a cup of tea or coffee, and in groups, they were also invited to 'design a scarf' with art materials on the table as they talked. It is those personal designs that we show here, some of which are very pertinent to their story, very moving and of great poignancy. And there is humour too ...

We are now looking forward to welcoming visitors back in June ... perhaps Friday the 25th.
We have hopes, but nothing is a given .. .. ..

We wish all our many friends, supporters and well-wishers, wherever in the world they are, all the very best. Chin Up !!

We have a new facility for the purchasing of our online DVD for £5, with online payment taken and access codes to the DVD sent, usually now the same day. See the EVENTS button in the menu, to go to the Museum Page

HERE'S AN INTERESTING THOUGHT
Perhaps a "Quote For The Day", one might say.

HISTORY IS NOT THERE FOR YOU TO LIKE OR DISLIKE.

It is there for you to learn from it.

And if it offends you, even better.

Because then you are less likely to repeat it.

It's not yours or ours to erase, amend or re-write.

It belongs to all of us.

And I would add, 'and we belong to it.'

Perhaps you may like to debate, discuss . . . .

And if you would like to browse an

album full of history, we have now made available just one album from our extensive collection online, which previously could only be viewed by visiting the museum. It is planned to change the album to a fresh one perhaps once a month or so, depending on how it goes.

Click the album, or EVENTS button in the menu to view.
You can look at this one for FREE!

LOCKDOWN ECHOES

It is very quiet in the Old School Museum
Even the mice have gone to sleep
Nothing moves, and all is still .. ..
No sounds, no laughter, not even a peep.

But hark, is that a creak .. ?
Of a squeaky floor or a wooden door ...
... a softly closing desk lid enhancing
the echos of children, long, long, past -
in gentle laughter and the joys of dancing.

For if we stand, and listen, so very quietly
We can hear in those very rafters
their joyful songs, and a glee that lasts
and will still be sensed by those
who come here in years long after ...
long after we all have long since passed.

© 2020 . . . Sutton & Wawne Museum

The images below were taken by Eric Johnson for the Dominoes series
of teaching books. Our own collection of the series is incomplete, and so these have been supplied from scans done by Amanda Denwood who now lives in Cumbria. Amanda visited the museum last year, and noted which books were missing, and offered to scan some missing ones for us from her own collection.

For folks longing for a semblance of the past,
even the distant past in that far off childhood country
called Nostalgialand, we have a few copies of a new
book to offer, by former Sutton resident and long-time
friend of our museum, Andrew Suddaby.

More general to Britain, but with nods to some
Hull memories that are not specific to Sutton,
this short book in a nice sized font for easy reading
is a general tour of what we did, watched,
and listened to in the UK years ago.

Priced at £7.00 including UK postage only
it will be on offer inside the museum for £5 when we re-open.
Sorry, overseas postage cannot be offered right now,
and in anycase, the cost would probably exceed the book.

______________________________________________

There's more Sutton & Wawne nostalgia to be had on our
Online-DVD, which is a special edition attached to our
website for Worldwide Access, and costs £5.
Email us your order, pay by Online Banking (BACS), and you will be sent the user ID and password by private message, either by email, or FaceBook Messenger, whichever you choose.

Sutton & Wawne
~ DVD-ROM ~
*** ONLINE ***

Let us help you start your tree, and find out where you come from .. We help you start your Family History Research .. We are not always what we think we are ...

PRESENTATIONS - TALKS - SPEAKERS
for Clubs and Societies

S&W MUSEUM

Bookings for Talks at Outside Venues, other churches, halls, etc.

In view of so many uncertainties, it seems more prudent not to resume our offers of speakers for outside venues for this year, 2021, even if and when the museum is again opens to visitors.

Nothing could resume before September anyway, and there will be more certainty by 2022 about what is legally allowed, and what is considered wise to do even if strictly legal.

So for this year, we will not be offering to do talks and slide presentations, other than those we may book to take place within the Old School hall itself, where we are more in control of arrangements within our own volunteer staff.

We regret any disappointment this decision may cause, but we feel sure that interest groups will have had similar discussions and misgivings about whether should be wary of resuming previously normal activities too soon.

Hopefully, we can say that by next year, 2022, 'normal service' will be resumed.

Volunteer
Staff Area

a small selection of miscellaneous
pics of Volunteer Staff memories are
now available to view for those staff
with the password to access them

Photo Album Archive
now complete up to Folder 19
and Wawne folders 1 - 4

T H E B A C K G R O U N D M A P
.. click the little map at the bottom of this page
to see a clearer map in a full window:
backspace to return ..

This version of our background map is one of our earliest, or supposedly so. Based on a map said to be dating from 1855, there are some significant changes to the maps we usually see of this village. Or more correctly, features we are used to seeing but did not exist when this land was surveyed. There is also at least one serious anomaly, with this date. The Old School, as we all know, opened in 1859, and so is not shown here. The map, here 'dated 1855', was obviously surveyed just before the school was built.

We can also note that we still have a 'High Street', rather than the later 'Church Street'. That is no mistake, it was just so back then. But a real and major 'error' is that we clearly have a railway and its station. How could this be so .. when the railway did not open, history tells us, until 1864? We see the station master's house is not yet built either, but could that empty box be the foundations for it? The conclusion must be that this is an amalgam of several surveys, some earlier, some later, and not just 1855. Indeed, looking at the original map published online by the National Library of Scotland, we see we have a very broad range of dates for all the surveys, 1842 to 1855. So we have a railway, and a station, neither of which existed in 1855. Perhaps the range of dates should have said 1842 to 1865, or thereabouts.

So this map is a little wayward, which teaches us that all old maps of this nature should be treated, if not with suspicion, then certainly with caution regarding dating. This is where having a basic handle on the history of your area can help you spot such anomalies. There is nothing wrong with the accuracy of the map in itself, just with the date attributed to it. But for all that, it is still a good map, and still very useful. In Sutton's case, very much so.

The (empty) site of the school is very clear, as are the former single story cottages which stood in a continous row almost up to the old 'Workhouse', known even in modern times as 'Poor House Row.' We see how the workhouse itself juts out into the street, just as it appears in our old photographs of 30 years later. What at first glance looks to be a marking for a Post Office, PO, shown in front of the old cottages, is no such thing, for on closer inspection it becomes clear as simply a 'P' ... and a tiny circle, on old maps a common marking for a pump, perhaps the village pump and long before piped water. Later maps do mark those cottages as also having a pump in their grounds at the back, and the far end one was later marked as a blacksmiths.

The slightly thicker line under the word 'Pinfold' is roughly where the school wall boundary to the present free car park is now. And that very word, pinfold, was still used for that same entrance to the back fields right up to the 1960s. Anciently, a pinfold was a small enclosure in a village where stray animals or livestock could be impounded and kept until claimed by their owners, or even sold to cover the costs of their keeping. Many villages had them, and the name widely survives around the country, long after the original use indicated by the name had ceased. In Sutton, old pupils who attended the school as recently as the 1950s have told us their memories of how they left the pony on which they rode to school 'in the pinfold'. Particularly the girls, from the outlying farms, who would use their pony to come to school, leave it tethered to a fence in the pinfold for the school day with a small bag of hay for sustenance, until the ride home at about 4pm. And, presumably, a topped up water trough too. We're told that there could be several ponies tethered there at any one time! Right up to the 1960s, in many areas, children of farms used their ponies as children today use their bicycles.

The very first of the line of old cottages shown here survives today, at the front of our Old School, now the Church Office and likewise with a Grade II listing for posterity. The old Workhouse, previously mentioned, later became the 'wedding green' part of the churchyard garden, and is today next to our War Memorial. The high brick wall at the back of the wedding green rose garden, being the boundary to the higher churchyard, was fashioned from salvaged old bricks when the Workhouse was later demolished. We can also just see the emergence of Leads Rd, top left, the early days of 'West Parade', and what would become Mona House. We can note the marking of a 'Guide Post' on the far side of the 'T' junction with Wawne Road. I'm sure that was the very same post that once guided me to turn right or left on routes 36 or 37 when I first came to live in Hull !

The wobbly line, with the spot height number 25, is the contour line around the heart of the village, indicating that the ridge on which the village sits lies at a significant height above the surrounding flatter landscape, being 25 feet in old English money at that point - or just short of 8 metres - above sea level. The lower part of that 8 metres will be the average sea level height between the lowest and heighest tides, and is a good deal lower than the highest water to be seen in the River Hull at Sutton Rd Bridge today when it is nearly overtopping the bank. The 25ft line follows the site of the grassy slope formerly at the rear of the school, of fond memory to generations of pupils that enjoyed playing on the fresh grass bank in spring, or sledging down the fresh snow in winter.

The true height of Sutton's ridge is indicated by other spot heights around the village, showing small variations of between 28 to 32 feet at the highest. The triangular symbol on the church tower shows there was a worthwhile view to the west from the top, and that the tower itself could be used as a 'trig point' for surveyors. It's a surprise, and hard to credit, that at a point just along Salthouse Rd, back then called Bilton Lane, at 34 feet, the land was actually a couple of feet higher than the site of St James's Church - the archaic grammer replicated here just as seen on the map.

Sutton residents of many years will easily spot that there are some significant residences missing, notably the terraced range of Church Mount and the extension to the 'Ladies Hospital' which now forms a rounded corner of Lowgate and today is termed the 'Ladies College'. The line of Potterill Lane is clearly visible, though not named as such then. One old Sutton resident is sure it once had the name 'Love Lane', but we have found no maps that designated it as such. Similarly, the line of Lime Tree Avenue, and perhaps they really are the very same lime trees that gave the avenue its name, planted long before the rows of dwellings down there. Both public houses are shown, as are what appears to be 'Chamberlain's Charity Church of England Schools', undoubtedly the forerunner of our own - now very old - school, but not quite built then - though I imagine plans were well in hand.

But we know that the map is more accurate than first appears. The trick is how we read it. It should read, "Chamberlain's Charity" AND "Church Schools" - separately, on two separate lines! For the two institutions were in fact on opposite sides of the road. Where the last letter of the word 'Schools' appears, it is marked in exactly the right place.

For we know that in the early 1800s, the owners of the "Duke of York" in Church Street (High St back then) owned almost the whole block, round the corner into Lowgate, and round the first bend. The curved wall that later became known for the carpet shop and the Mushroom Pottery was formerly a boundary wall, firstly to a brewhouse belonging to the 'Duke', but which later became a small abbatoir to Holmes' butchers shop. That use is recalled by people still alive in Sutton, as is the painted frieze on the curved wall depicting livestock, beasts, sheep, pigs, etc.

But in between, even before the abbatoir, it was the site of a small church school, the map showing what may perhaps have been a yard behind that wall, long before it was covered over to gain a pantiled roof. There are old records, tithe awards, that show that in around 1850, the vicar of St James' rented the corner part for what may perhaps have been Sutton's first Church of England School. Before the end of that decade, his school would relocate to the brand-new building by the Pinfold that we know today - our Old School - on land donated by the Broadley family. And this 1855 map confirms it.

The extra symbolism, the animals and creatures, are mine of course, and not part of the original map. Anyone who knows me and my family roots will understand the reason for that particular fox, though undoubtedly, they would have been enough of them in this area to be a concern to any of these householders that kept fowl, and that would be most of them. Even the big houses, then increasingly being built by wealthy business and shipping folk from Hull, would have had their own chicken coops and pigsties somewhere on their land, maintained by their servants, of course.

What is also very noticeable to Sutton experts on first glance is the amount of land occupied by orchards, of various sizes. No shortage of apples and pears here, and I daresay nor for most other native prized fruits at the time. We can even see the gap in the buildings, still there today, just inside Lowgate, the site of the now famous 'Pear Tree Cottage' where the pear tree still comes into full leaf every spring, and that same house being one of the very first homes of Sutton's own 'Telephone Exchange'. We're talking 1910 here, or the years just before the First War. That pear tree, by the way, has it's own listing in the city council's list of heritage trees in the wider Sutton conservation area. For those not familiar with it, I've marked it with the tidliest of marks right on the front of the house where it stands today.

All the colourisation here is also mine, and it's worth also noting that the larger individual trees shown here would most certainly have been here at that time. Surveyors and cartographers did not put them in for decoration, no matter how much a bit of basic amateur artistry makes them appear so. This was the early days of the Ordnance Survey, founded to produce military maps for the army. Accuracy was everything. If an OS map shows a tree ... there was a tree.

No doubt others who know the village better, and their own houses or businesses more intimately, will see other signs of the later changes to come, of individual new houses and rather less of orchards and green space as the population grew, largely a result of the opening of that still new railway. But, despite all that extra building, and all the changes where Sutton has lost buildings, particularly the big houses since the 1950s, the road layout is still pretty much the same, and Sutton is still a village that could recognisably be the Sutton of this map, should a resident of 1855 be able come back and see it today. It still retains a lot of its old character and atmosphere in abundance.

For those interested in perusing it further, a better version can be seen in its own window by clicking here.

Press 'backspace' to close it and come back to this Home Page.

The Webmanager's Favourite Historical Quote
I first discovered this incisive quote, when I was well past 60. I realised that this is exactly what my history teacher at Crown Hills School was trying to teach us over 50 years ago, albeit in not so many words.
For these words ring just as true now as they did back then, even more so with the pace of change today being so much faster than my own childhood days. If those of our children - that show an interest in their history - understand these thoughts below by the time they leave school, they will be well on their way to understanding not only themselves, but their own country. Trevallyn's very last sentence sums it all up very well.

"In political history one King at a time reigns; one Parliament at a time sits. But in social history we find in every period several different kinds of social and economic organisation going on simultaneously in the same country, the same shire, the same town.

Thus, in the realm of agriculture, we find the open-field strip cultivation of the Anglo-Saxons still extant in the eighteenth century, side by side with ancient enclosed fields of the far older Celtic pattern, and modern enclosures scientifically cultivated by methods approved by Arthur Young (ed. an English historian and agriculturalist in the c.18th).

And so it is with the varieties of industrial and commercial organisation – the domestic, the craft, the capitalist systems are found side by side down the centuries. In everything the old overlaps the new – in religion, in thought, in family custom. There is never any clear cut; there is no single moment when all Englishmen adopt new ways of life and thought."

G.M. Trevelyan: from his preface to 'An English Social History', 1942.

E N D OF P A G E

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