The parish of Driffield is situated in what was once the wapentake of Harthill (Bainton Beacon division), part of the historical East Riding of Yorkshire (see maps in Introduction). By the time of the 1832 parish boundary changes the town of Great Driffield had become its main town. The parish also included the hamlets of Little Driffield, Elmswell and Kelleythorpe and the localities of Kendale, Danesdale and Wold House, the latter three being today little more than farms. Driffield’s history dates back to the Neolithic period, the quantity of tools, pottery and burial barrows found in the area suggesting that the early population was already large. It remained so throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages and under the Romans and Anglo-Saxons, when it was associated with Aldfrith, king of the Northumbrians, who died in Driffield in 705 AD and is said to be buried in the church at Little Driffield. By the time of the Norman Conquest Driffield had become a large and regionally important manor, extending from Kilham in the north, Kilnwick in the south, Skerne in the east to Tibthorpe in the west, with Morcar, Earl of Northumbria, its lord. Morcar rebelled against William I in 1068 and again in 1071, for which he was imprisoned and his estates confiscated by the king, the very man who had laid them waste. There was another small holding in Driffield, held by the archbishop of York, which by 1086 was also in the hands of the king.

Archaeological and documentary evidence suggests that there was only one settlement called Driffield until the late 1200s, when the epithets Great and Little and their variants Magna and Parva first appeared. Furthermore, the original settlement appears to have been Little Driffield rather than Great Driffield, although the latter became the larger settlement. The two Driffields, sometimes known as Driffields Ambo, were mainly awarded to favourites of the Crown. One of the first grantees was William le Gros, count of Aumale, followed by two of his Forz descendants intermittently between 1156 and 1246. The Scropes held them between the 14th and 16th centuries and their heirs, the Danbys, until the early 18th. They then passed to the Langleys, followed by their heirs, the Dawnays, until the whole estate was divided and sold in the early 20th century.

Great Driffield appears to have begun as a Norman settlement associated with a royal castle, having a regular layout typical of Norman towns. The castle was built on a natural elevation in the 11th century, but has since disappeared entirely. All that remains of its presence is the motte which survives as Moot Hill in the northern part of the town to the east of The Beck. Excavations carried out in the 19th century and again in 1975 revealed remains of a 4th century Roman settlement underlying the motte and a rare 8th century Northumbrian palace lying in its immediate vicinity. The castle was visited by the kings of England, from John in the early 1200s to Henry III in 1227 to Edward III in 1332. A manor house appears to have been built to the west of The Beck but had disappeared by 1423, when “the site of the manor” was mentioned. The ensuing lords of the manor invariably lived elsewhere, so it is probable that no large house was built in its place, though Hall Garth which was built near the site, was considered the largest house in Great Driffield in the late 1600s. It has since been demolished and the whole area is today a public park, called Northend Park, containing “historical earthworks” in its north west corner.

Great Driffield remained one of the largest settlements in the area into the late 1600s, despite not having a market of any significance. It grew in importance in the early to mid 1700s, when the increasingly popularity of Scarborough brought traffic through the town, and when the local gentry discovered the advantages the area offered for their leisure pursuits of hunting and angling. The opening of the Driffield Navigation in 1770, linking Great Driffield to Hull, and the expanding trade with the West Riding transformed it into a boom town. It grew rapidly in size in the first half of the 1800s, helped by the coming of the railway and the building of a station there on the Hull to Bridlington line in 1846. The weekly market was revived and industry prospered, especially corn milling, along with malting, brewing, tanning, bone crushing and iron working. The downturn came with the agricultural depression that began in the late 1870s. The all important corn mills closed one after the other and the town never relived its former glory days. Driffield, as the town is known today to locals and non locals alike, has now become a dormitory town for Hull, Beverley and Bridlington.

Foundations of an early church have been identified at Great Driffield, one of the two pre Conquest churches that Domesday states stood in “Drifelt”. The remains indicate a tower and a tall, aisleless nave. Aisles were added to the nave in the late 1100s or the early 1200s, when the church was enlarged and the chancel rebuilt. By the mid 1300s Great Driffield had become the larger settlement and its church the parish church, replacing that of Little Driffield, though both shared a single priest. Great Driffield church was remodelled in the mid 1400s, when the tower was raised and gained the reputation of being one of the finest in the county. Standing 34 metres high, the visitor’s eye is immediately drawn to its battlements with its eight soaring pinnacles. Beneath are four majestic belfry windows and, around the doorway on its west front, the arms of prominent local families and those of St. Mary’s Abbey, York. This suggests that these were the benefactors of the tower, but tradition assigns this solely to a member of the Hotham family. He had taken a solemn vow to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the event of his recovery from a dangerous illness but, unable to fulfil his vow, he was allowed to compensate by building the tower instead. The chancel underwent another rebuild in c1505, and by 1558 the church of Great Driffield had been dedicated to All Saints. Shoddy alterations were undertaken in the early and mid 1800s, but all traces of them were removed during the very thorough and costly restoration of 1878-1880, when the roof of the nave was restored to its original pitch, an aisle added to the chancel to provide an organ chamber and vestry, and the north aisle and south porch rebuilt. The stained glass windows date from the late 1800s, and the oak screens and retable from the early 1900s.

Little Driffield is believed to be the original settlement mentioned in Domesday. The pattern of its land ownership was therefore followed by Great Driffield and not vice versa, although the latter later overtook the former in importance and size. The original church, the other one mentioned in Domesday, was pre Conquest with a short chancel, long nave, north porch and north and south aisles. Aldfrith, king of the Northumbrians, who died in Driffield in 705 AD, is said to be buried there, a claim backed up by the 16th century antiquary, John Leland, though no tomb has been found. It could have disappeared when the church was rebuilt during 11th or 12th centuries, or when the tower was heightened and the chancel arch reconstructed in 14th century, or during later restorations. Little Driffield church was one of several mother churches of the great royal manors given by Henry I to Archbishop Gerard and York minster in c1107. However, by the mid 1300s it had lost its status, having been superseded by Great Driffield as the chief church of the parish. Little Driffield became a chapelry, serving also the neighbouring hamlets of Elmswell and Kelleythorpe; it was declared an ecclesiastical parish in its own right in 1579. Having been dedicated to St. Mary in 1286, to St. Peter in the mid 1800s, it was rededicated to St. Mary in the late 1900s.

Owing to a botched rebuild in 1809, little of the earlier churches remains, with the exception of the tower, the chancel arch, and the south wall of the chancel. As at Great Driffield, a thorough restoration was carried out between 1889 and 1890, in the 14th century style, in an attempt to mitigate the damage caused. This revealed evidence that the chancel had been reduced in size and that the Norman tower arch had been built into another earlier one, probably from Anglo-Saxon times. Stonework from an earlier church had been used as building material: fragments of a cross dating back to c900 AD were integrated in the nave and grave slabs with incised crosses in outside walls. The church we see today is an elegant Gothic building; the roof is high pitched, the walls are supported by moulded buttresses, three windows with two lights have been inserted in the sides and the east window has been heightened and given three lights. The interior is light and cheerful, with its richly decorated hammer-beam roof and its carved oak altar. The plain square wooden pulpit formerly stood in Pocklington church.

Elmswell, meaning Helm’s Spring, is a well watered hamlet lying south-west of Great Driffield. As in the rest of the parish, Bronze Age barrows, Iron Age remains, Roman coins and Anglo-Saxon pottery have been found in the area. There were two manors at the time of Domesday, one forming part of Earl Morcar’s holding and the other belonging to Northman, but by 1086 both were in the king’s hands. The whole settlement was granted in the 11th century by William II to St. Mary’s Abbey, York, where it remained until the abbey’s dissolution in 1539. Thereafter the manor passed through the hands of various Yorkshire families, including the Pickerings of Oswaldkirk, St. Quintins, Thwings and Londesboroughs.
Elmswell Hall, known as the Old Hall after the building of Elmwell House, is thought to be one of the first brick buildings in East Yorkshire. It was built in about 1640 by Henry Best, known for his books that provide invaluable information on all aspects of post-medieval rural life. It stands adjacent to the site of an earlier manor house, thought to be the original home of the carved limestone reused in the Old Hall and the sculpted head reset on its the north wall. The Hall was acquired by Lord Londesborough in 1844, but by 1965 it stood empty and decaying. Its roof collapsed in the 1970s, leaving only the remains of one of the three massive chimneys. Recently stabilised and classified as a “controlled ruin”, it was opened to the public for one day in 2023.

Elmswell House was built in 1856 in the Tudor Gothic style for a Driffield solicitor who also farmed in Elmswell. It was requisitioned by the armed forces during the Second World War, after which it was remodelled, restored and extended westwards.

Kelleythorpe, meaning Keling’s Village, has also been settled since the Bronze Age, and its early ownership mirrors that of the Driffields, being part of Earl Morcar’s manor and passing to the Crown by 1086. Thereafter the hamlet was owned by different families, including the Kelleythorpes, Ughtreds, Lascys, Hothams, Percys, Fairfaxes and finally the Londsboroughs. By the end of the 1600s Kelleythorpe was a deserted medieval settlement with only the manor house left standing, probably occupied by the tenants of the lord of the manor. The Londsboroughs rebuilt the house there in 1848 and built Kelleythorpe Cottages in the 1850s. Between 1917 and 1919 a military airfield was constructed on land belonging to Kellythorpe and Eastburn. It was revived in the 1930s, was in the hands of the RAF in 1936 and became a bomber station during the Second World War. In the post war period it was a fighter jet station and school, a USAAF missile base, an aircraft testing base and an Army driving circuit. When the RAF and Army moved to other premises, the land was sold to make way for an industrial estate and the officers’ housing was sold to private buyers.

Three farms were considered part of the parish of Great Driffield before the 1832 parish boundary changes, all lying beside the B1249 running north to Langtoft. Kendale, the closest to Driffield, was mentioned in Domesday as part of Earl Morcar’s holding, but the flints and pottery found there point to a settlement dating back as early as the 5th century BC to the 1st century AD. Great Kendale Farm was built after enclosure. Danesdale, lying further north on the eastern side of the road, was a large estate of over 500 acres at enclosure. The farmhouse was rebuilt in the mid 1900s. Wold House, lying opposite Danesdale on the western side of the road, consists of an L-shaped farmhouse built in c1800 and a newer, larger one built nearby.

The Pickerings are well represented in the parish of Great Driffield. The earliest known was Margaret, Lady Pickering, daughter of Thomas Percy, Baron Egremont, and widow of Sir John Pickering of the 12th generation of the Pickerings of Oswaldkirk. In 1536 she was holding the lease on the “manor and lordship of Elmeswell with mansion, houses, stables and buildings” belonging to St Mary’s Abbey, York. The mansion probably refers to that which preceded the building of Elmswell Hall.

The William Pickering of the 23rd generation of the Pickerings of Sledmere was the innkeeper of the Triton Inn, Sledmere. In 1831 he bought the tannery that William Fox had built by The Beck near the site of the castle in Great Driffield from Fox’s son and constructed a malt kiln there, alongside the tannery. Both installations were let in 1838, probably following Pickering’s death, and in 1845 they were owned by the Skelton family who set about building a brewery at the site, which had been completed by 1850. William’s bother, Abraham Rogerson Pickering, also moved to Driffield, becoming an auctioneer and bailiff in the town and the publican of the Black Swan.

The next Pickering to leave his mark on Great Driffield was Thomas of the second generation of the Pickerings of Driffield 2, whose origins are obscure. In 1851 has was as brazier, tinner and ironmonger, living in Market Place. By 1854 he had opened his own foundry, the Albion Foundry, later the Victoria Foundry, at nearby Cross Hill, chiefly to make agricultural implements. He was frequently employed on the Sledmere estate where perhaps some of his iron fencing survives. In 1878 he was succeeded by his sons Charles and Henry, but by 1889 Charles Taylor, an iron founder from Leeds, had bought the business. This closed during the recession that hit Driffield soon afterwards. In 1973 Driffield Council bought the former Victoria Foundry and converted one of its buildings into an indoor market, but the venture was not successful and the hall and a large part of the site were demolished to make room for a car park. However, several brick buildings survive: a line of one storey 19th century buildings, now converted into shops; a large three storey building initially converted into a bar and nightclub that closed in 2022 and is currently being converted into commercial premises and flats; and a large two storey building with a clock on its roof, perhaps a former warehouse, now a carpet outlet.

Simeon Pickering, a miller, of the 4th generation of the Pickerings of Foston-on-the-Wolds married Eleanor Harper in Great Driffield in 1839 and their first four children were born there. Their following four children were born in Hull, and the couple must have emigrated to America with their sixth and eighth children by 1857, as they had by then settled in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Some of the Pickerings of Driffield lived in Great Driffield from the 3rd to the 7th generation, while others moved to Hull, one of the latter being the well known fish merchant, ship owner and philanthropist, Christopher Godmond Pickering.

In 1934 Frederick Pickering, shoemaker, of the 5th generation of the P-ckerings of Hutton Magna was a trustee of the Bourne Primitive Methodist chapel that opened in 1933.

In the 1950s the former coachworks of Pickering Bros. in Bridge Street were bought as a paint and repair shop. These Pickerings have not been identified.

Stephen Pickering Traditional Building Services Ltd. is the contractor currently in charge of maintaining the stability of Elmswell Old Hall.

However, it is the Puckerings who have had the longest continuous presence in Driffield. Thomas, a labourer from Skirpenbeck, was recorded under the surname Pickering when he married Ann Coates in Great Driffield in 1772, as were his eight children. (This was probably an error on the part of the clerk; Thomas and Ann were both illiterate.) Their eldest child, also Thomas, signed his surname Puckering at his marriage to Catherine Binnington in Great Driffield in 1796, and the baptisms of his nine children were also recorded under the original spelling. Members of these Puckerings of Driffield, an offshoot of the Puckerings of Kirby Underdale, lived continuously in Elmswell from the 11th to the 15th generations. Some moved to other parts of Yorkshire and others emigrated to Ontario, Canada, and Queensland, Australia, which comes as no surprise as the this family was extremely prolific!

Sources:

https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/ERY/GreatDriffield
https://opendomesday.org/place/TA0257/great-driffield
Victoria History of the County of York, East Riding, vol. 9 (not online)
Bulmer’s History, Topography and Directory of East Yorkshire with Hull 1892, pp. 163-169: https://specialcollections.le.ac.uk/digital/collection/p16445coll4/id/324025
History and Topography of Yorkshire, vol. 2, York, Ainsty, East Riding, pp. 497-505: https://books.google.fr/books?redir_esc=y&id=unEKAQAAMAAJ

Great Driffield:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driffield
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driffield_Castle
Moot Hill: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1015612?section=official-list-entry
Church of All Saints: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1083378?section=official-list-entry

Little Driffield:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Driffield
Church of Saint Mary: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1083376?section=official-list-entry

Elmswell:
Elmswell OId Hall: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1083792?section=official-list-entry
Hall at Elmswell: https://archive.org/details/ruraleconomyinyo00bestrich/page/n3
Old Hall 2024: https://www.eastriding.gov.uk/news/article/?entry=642549072b176b1b987a2985
Elmswell Old Hall: https://www.stephenpickering.co.uk/elmswell-hall#&gid=1144050458&pid=4