Beverley, Minster, Town and St Mary's

Beverley, in East Yorkshire, is the very place for medieval English history, still living in it today.  If you are a freeman of Beverley (as your father and your father's father before him and so on will  have had to be) you may still graze your cattle on the greensward commonland of Westwood, where young bullocks idle by the road, outnumbering passing cars.  At a push, you can also defend the North Bar gate, possibly with a pike.  Beverley is full of people, whether living ones enjoying a spot of morris dancing, or actual medieval ones, extant in the carvings in Beverley Minster and the Norman Church of St. Mary's, both utterly beautiful buildings in York stone.  All is orderly within, as the images climb from the humble right up to the holy aloft.  However, it is not without the influence of human nature, as the guilds competed to have their trades advertised in the process of decorating St. Mary's and a former pastor of the Minster still feels the need to have a quiet word.

Everything in Beverley is within walking distance, with plenty of opportunity to partake of, say, a Yorkshire cream tea or two along the way.   It is a place where a retired teacher carefully presents an instructive text for the season in her window, for the pleasure of passers by.   In St Mary's, the Pilgrim Rabbit is said to be the inspiration of Alice in Wonderland's white rabbit and even in the begrimed ye olde worlde woodwork of the White Horse pub, Hengate, there is a green man to be seen in the furniture.  What is there not to be enchanted by in Beverley, where there are street names like that, or Lurk Lane, to be found?