Elvington: Riverside village with a crucial role in the war

It’s believed Sutton Bridge, the narrow eastern entrance to the village south-east of York, dates to the late 14th century.

Elvington’s historic heart includes Main Street, the village green, Church Lane and the meadows stretching to the river, which marks the border between East Riding and York councils’ territories.

There were two eel fisheries at the time of William the Conqueror’s Domesday survey and during the Industrial Revolution the river, which runs from near Scarborough to the Barmby on the Marsh, where it meets the River Ouse, became a significant transportation and industrial hub.

To the south-east of the village Sutton Lock and a cut was built in 1723, bypassing a new weir across the river. A lock-keeper's house, dating from the 19th century, overlooks the structure which was closed in the early 20th century due to the growth of railways, before being reopened for pleasure craft in the 1970s.

The landscape downstream of the lock, which was tidal until the Barmby Barrage was built in 1975, is protected as Lower Derwent Valley Special Protection Area and Special Area of Conservation.

It contains a greater area of high-quality examples of lowland hay meadows than any other UK site, as well rare Alder woodland and is home to breeding and wintering bird populations. Naturalists say curlew and oystercatchers are thriving in the area, while numbers of the black-tailed godwit have soared in recent years.

The rich flora and fauna surrounding the village, six miles south-east of York, is partly due to the rich Vale of York soils, which have underpinned the dominant agricultural sector in the area.

Elvington still features numerous traditional farm buildings, such as the listed Belvoir House and its former barn and Roxby Farm both looming over the rectangular village green and Chequer farmhouse nearby at the western end of Main Street.

The farms have given their names to some of the surrounding streets and overlooking the green and Elvington Beck, which runs alongside Main Street, there’s a former blacksmith’s cottage.

It is a year since Yorkshire Water announced further work to reduce the number of storm discharges into Elvington Beck, a tributary of the river Derwent, by increasing storage at the existing storm overflow at Church Lane.

Elvington residents suffered from the beck backing up for several years around the millennium. In November 2000 ten homes were inundated and Main Street was impassable for 19 consecutive days, leaving 120 properties cut off.

Also opposite the village green and dating from the 17th century, the Grey Horse pub has featured a glass wall of bottled beers, a wooden propeller as well as a vintage radio collection.

Also on Main Street is Derwent House, which is believed to have been owned by a part of the Rowntree family, which boasts an unusual observatory tower, the former Victorian schoolhouse which has been repurposed as the village hall, and a property that has served as the village shop.

Beside the green, Church Lane climbs past 13 beautifully conserved Victorian cottages to Holy Trinity Church, which has a tower detached from the main building, topped by a tent roof.

However, the village’s most impressive building is the grade II* listed 11,684sq ft Elvington Hall, which is believed to have Elizabethan origins.

However, it is to the west of the village where there are key sites sustaining Elvington, including a primary school, GP surgery and a large industrial estate as well as the Yorkshire Air Museum and Elvington Airfield.

In March the museum hosted a service to remember the last German aircraft, a Junkers JU88 Night Fighter, brought down over British soil during the Second World War.

It had been attacking RAF Elvington, which now serves as the museum, before crashing into Dunnington Lodge, a farmhouse on the edge of the airfield, killing the crew and farmer Richard Moll, his wife, Helen and daughter in law, Violet.

During the war two French bomber squadrons, numbering 2,500 personnel, were stationed at the base.

The museum was launched in 1985 on part of the site of RAF Elvington, a World War Two heavy bomber base and has since developed into the UK’s largest independent aviation museum.

The museum’s collection includes the tiny Flying Flea, a Douglas Dakota IV and a Hawker Hurricane IIc Night Fighter.

In 1952 RAF Elvington was turned over to the United States Air Force, Strategic Air Command, and following huge amounts of money being invested in lengthening the runways for jet aircraft the Americans abandoned it just six years later.

The 1960s saw the airfield used to test the prototype Buccaneer aircraft, before its 1.92-mile runway, the largest in the north of England, saw it become a motorsport venue.

While 1998 saw Colin Fallows land the UK record on the runway with 269mph in his Vampire jet dragster, eight years later TV presenter Richard Hammond was left fighting for his life after a high-speed jet car crash while filming Top Gear there. The airfield continues to host numerous speed record attempts. Last August a stunt rider wearing titanium skis claimed the record for the fastest speed being dragged behind a motorbike at nearly 160mph.