England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Swine St Mary

The Parish

The parish of Swine lies in the extreme southeast of Yorkshire within the Holderness sub-county and roughly 6 miles northeast of the port of Hul. The tiny village of Swine sits about 2 miles west of the A165 road which links Hull with Bridlington. Whilst granting its name to the parish few of the parishioners actually inhabit Swine a tiny village of a few farms and cottages sitting alongside a lane which peters out into grazing marshes. The entire parish of Swine also encompassed two chapelries at Skirlaugh and Bilton, both licensed for marriages and will have their own pages in this project, as well as a list of townships (Benningholme with Grange, Coniston, Ellerby,Ganstead, Marton, North Skirlaugh, Thirtleby, Wyton, and part of Arnold) consequently early gazetteers estimate barely 13% of the parish population actually lived in Swine. The Holderness area consist of two distinct areas, the majority is on light easily worked and sandy soils ideal for cereals, to the west lies an area made workable by the drainage actions of man with a web of channels draining the flat ground and providing rich peaty soils ideal for the growing of high value table vegetables and rich grazing. Modern developments have come and gone from the parish, a railway line formerly linking Hull with Hornsea has closed and been converted to a hiking and cycleway, part of the cross-country Trans Pennine Trail. Most of the parish is drained westwards utilising either Holderness Drain to take the water directly to the Humber Estuary or by way of Wawne Drain and River Hull to the same destination. Swine village is sited at just 7 metres above the sea and much of the parish is at or even lower heights, in very flat terrain a spot height of 27 metres to the northeast at Old Ellerby marks the highest ground around. Swine parish, including the two chapelries, covered over 13,500 acres making it the most extensive parish in the East Riding, together with the chapelries it would have supported a population of around 1,700 parishioners. In Domesday times Swine was held by the Archbishop of York and could offer just 5 ploughs and a small meadow, several other manors in the area of the parish also recorded results, Ganstead with 3 ploughs, Coniston with 10, Oubrough with just 2 and Beningholme with 15 ploughs were all in the hands of Drogo de la Beuvriere.

The Church

As can be seen Swine is a complex parish and St Mary has a complexity of its own, seemingly too big for its small village it has a history of such change as to be merely a remnant of its once grandeur. The major reason for the extent of Swine parish was to serve the 12th century Cistercian monastery, today's St Mary being just a part of the monastery complex. Surrounding the churchyard are lumps and bumps as relics of the former monastery, many identified as fish ponds. St Mary began life as the 12th century nun's church built in the Norman Romanesque style. Pevsner refers to an 18th century engraving which shows St Mary as a cruciform church complete with north and south transepts sitting either side of a broad central crossing tower, that cruciform church had an aisleless nave to its west and a large aisled choir to its east. The former aisled choir is now the heart of St Mary and much of the remainder has disappeared completely.  Pevsner assigns a date of c1180 as the latest date for the construction with the lancets of the clerestory the earliest features. The northern chapel of the former church was also retained but the Decorated styled windows are from Victorian work rather than original. Late medieval work on the chancel produced one of the stand-out features of the church, the glorious 7-light east window and similar but less ostentatious windows on the southern face. The central crossing tower disappeared at some point in history and was replaced in 1787 but today's western version complete with battlements and pinnacles. A substantial restoration of 1872 saw many windows replaced, the southern porch constructed and the western tower refurbished. The gravel verge outside the white-painted gates has room for only a single car, otherwise parking should be sought in the wider stretches of Main Street. A diagonal path leads to the church through an open and uncluttered churchyard with few obstacles for the photographer to worry about.