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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.   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.  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.  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'. We see how that 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.  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 that they rode to school on '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! 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 '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. 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. 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.