31 March 2018

A number of our group attended the launch of DEBS – Discovering England’s Burial Spaces – hosted by Gareth and Nicole Beale at King’s Manor, in York, last Tuesday. It was an opportunity not only to be introduced to the aims of the project, but also to meet some of the other groups who are involved.  We were pleased to see our friends from Raikes Road Burial Ground, Skipton, were there too.

Alan with Peter from Raikes Road

A good spread was provided at lunchtime, and Nicole thoughtfully provided lots of chocolate to keep us going through the afternoon! It was intended to be an overview, a general introduction to the objectives of the project and what they hope to achieve. For more details see the website: www.debs.ac.uk

It was a really enjoyable day – we especially found Dr Harold Mytum’s lecture interesting and entertaining. And it was gratifying to see that we are on the right lines with the way our project is progressing. He talked about how gravestones can be studied for their cultural and social significance as well as their family history, and many of the aspects he talked about are on our “to do” list, or we are looking at already.  

Then it was round to the Lion and Lamb pub across the street for a general chat over a few drinks to round the day off. Some of us put the world to rights, of course, as you tend to do in a pub once you’ve a couple of drinks!

On a different note, Chris has been looking at the medieval Embsay and Eastby – after much hard work, he put together a paper which he delivered to the Craven and Skipton History Society earlier this month. Much of what he talked about was from his work on the Bolton Priory Compotus – the fragmentary financial accounts of the priory’s estates in the 14^th century, which included many references to Embsay and Eastby. Together with some research on Skipton’s history he has come up with some very interesting revelations about the medieval crisis in the Craven area. The talk was well received and he hopes to produce an expanded version for publication.  

Jane Lunnon