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Archiver > HOLDER > 2000-10 > 0972030023


From: "Tom and Wendy Hiefield" <>
Subject: Holderness
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2000 01:20:23 -0700


Holderness as a location might pertain to some of us Holders.
Interestingly, a writer in the 26 July 2000 on-line issue of RootsWeb Review
under "Somebody's Links" described being in a village in Holderness east of
Kingston upon Hull. [I went through Hull once on my way by train to
Edinburgh but didn't see much.]

In July 1999, I asked Chuck Holderness about Holderness as a place (Chuck
can be found at and ). This is
what he said:
"Holderness is the name given to the coastal stretch of east Yorkshire from
Flamborough Head to Spurn Head at the mouth of the Humber. The district
forms a huge marshy peninsula about thirty miles long and is bordered by the
River Hull in the west, the River Humber in the south and the North Sea in
the east. The name is Viking and means the headland (ness) of the hold. A
hold was a man of high rank in the area of Northern England where the Danes
ruled called the Danelaw.
The Holderness coast is prone to erosion and a number of villages that
existed at the time of the Domesday Book[sic] have since been washed away.
Holderness villages like Barmston, Ulrome, and Skipsea just to the south of
Bridlington were once much further from the sea than they are today.
Skipsea may have been the site of the Viking administrative capital of
Holderness. It was later the site of the castle William De La Pole [who]
became Hull's first mayor in 1331. William's son Michael also became Mayor
of Hull and later founded a Carthusian priory in the town.
Hull's strategic importance was recognized centuries after the reign of
King Edward when in the English Civil War Hull was the first place to be
openly hostile to King Charles I. The King was on his way to Hull from
Beverley in 1642 when the gates of the town wall were closed to him by the
Governor of Hull called Sir John Holtham. The Parliamentarians had
persuaded Holtham to side with them during a meeting at a house in Hull's
Silver Street. The building where the meeting was held was Sir John's
House - later to become the White Hart Inn."

Charles Holderness forwarded something from archives and special collections
of Hull University which I will send next. w.

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