County of Contrasts

Hence, perhaps, Hickes’s other telling phrase; ‘Epitome of England’. Yorkshire’s geography was so varied that it was comparable to the whole of England’s.

In the north west were the mountains - the bleak desolation of the highest, Mickle Fell, and the majesty of Ingleborough and Pen y Ghent – in the south the misty marshlands of Thorne Moors and Hatfield Chase; the cliffs, limestone at Malham and Gordale, chalk, at Flamborough; natural wonders like Spurn Point and High Force, Brimham Rocks and Gaping Ghyll; Hornsea Mere and Semerwater; the beauty of dales, moors and the East Riding wolds; the sandy beaches of Redcar and Saltburn, Filey and Bridlington; the unity provided by a great river system.

But in George Hickes’s day there were already the works of man, too: vast mediaeval churches, often in the East Riding and reflecting the wealth derived from sheep-rearing: the great Minsters of Beverley, Howden, Ripon and York, with Bridlington Priory and Selby Abbey; Holy Trinity, Hull, All Saints, Rotherham and Patrington; halls and estates like Burton Agnes, Burton Constable, East Riddlesden and Temple Newsam; the fishing harbours of Whitby and Scarborough and the wool exporting ports of Hull and York; market towns, with Beverley, the second city of the North by 1500 and one of the ten great towns of England, and the city of York - by far the largest place, fashionable resort of the gentry, with the prestige of the archbishopric and reflected glory from its Roman past. By the seventeenth century counties were being seen not only in terms of their geographical features but as social units. ‘This Nation’…’this great Province’ were John Speed’s terms for Yorkshire in the notes to his‘Yorke-shire’ map of 1627.

etc.