Walkington: The 'magnificent' Yorkshire village named among The Sunday Times' Best Places to Live

Unusually for a Yorkshire village, Walkington’s main gateways feature crossroads.

After passing ploughed fields it comes as something of a surprise to find small queues of cars and traffic lights at the junction of Coppleflat Lane, Bentley Lane and Broadgate waiting to turn into Walkington’s main thoroughfare, East End.

The slightly suburban feel continues with mature deciduous trees lining the route through the village and large, detached properties built either side of the Second World War being set in substantial grounds.

In declaring the village as among the country’s best to live in three years ago, The Sunday Times described the trees as “magnificent” and as giving the main street “a secret feel, which is appropriate enough in a corner of the country that remains under the radar”.

While some of the village’s residents have disputed the latter claim, being just a stone’s throw from the market town of Beverley and a handful of miles from the outskirts of Hull, its mixture of buildings does distinguish it from its urban neighbours.

Passing the trees, there’s an unusally lengthy duck pond, providing a focal point for Walkington’s centre, surrounded by a fenced timber walkway.

Behind the pool stands Walkington Bowls Club featuring an immaculate outdoor green with six rinks.

It is in no small part due to the village’s hotchpotch of building styles that so large a section of Walkington has been designated as a conservation area.

The first of the village’s three pubs on the main road, The Barrel, looks the part as a traditional local, proving a draw for sports teams and young farmers while hosting community-boosting activities such as a Thursday quiz and live music.

There’s an impressive selection of other activities in the parish sustained by its 2,300 population, ranging from keep fit classes and a cricket club to quilting and ‘tea and toast’ events in the Methodist schoolroom.

Alongside being known for staging Yorkshire’s “friendly car boot sale” as well as a ukulele festival, villagers stage an annual pantomime.

The community’s spirit was put on display to mark the centenary of the First World War’s Armistice Day, with some 35 metal silhouettes representing fallen soldiers placed outside their homes.

Residents also come together in the village centre to support the 270-pupil primary school, at the Dog and Duck and Ferguson Fawsitt pubs, the village hall and a neighbouring convenience store as well as Anglican and Methodist churches.

The grade II* listed All Hallows Church, which boasts “well attended” weekly services heralded by its bell ringing team, has medieval perpendicular windows and a tower and mostly dates from the 15th century. Its southern entrance and transept arches are believed to date from around 1200.

Much less obvious is another medieval feature, which stands on a verge on the south side of the B1230 near the traffic lights.

Surrounded by wrought iron railings, there’s a two-foot high weathered stone stump set into a square stone base.

Missing its cross head, it is one of four original stones marking the limit of the Liberty and Sanctuary of Beverley Minster, which extended two miles around the tomb of John, Bishop of York.

It has been chronicled that King Athelstan granted the right of sanctuary after crediting his victory over the Scots to John. Criminals on the Beverley side of the stone were protected by the church and able to spend 30 days seeking a pardon and pursuers who apprehended a fleeing fugitive inside the sanctuary were fined.

However, the history surrounding the settlement is far more ancient. In fields close to the village, at an undisclosed location, some 46 Iron Age coins with an unusually high gold content were unearthed by detectorists in the early 2000s.

According to the Yorkshire Museum, the Celtic coins are the region’s oldest, dating to before 50AD. They were created by the Corieltavi tribe whose jurisdiction may have extended into southern Yorkshire.

Outside Walkington, off the B1230, towards High Hunsley stands what archaeologists have discovered was a cemetery called "Hell's Gate", featuring skeletons missing skulls. Theories that it had been the site of a Roman massacre or a Celtic head cult, have in recent years been disproved by radiocarbon dating of some of the bones.

Experts have concluded the site was where for a few hundred years Anglo-Saxons found guilty of offences were executed. It is the only known example of such a site in northern England.

The area surrounding the village is also known for its ancient funerary monuments, including Neolithic long barrows, where members of the region’s earliest farming communities were buried. Despite having had its height significantly cut by hundreds of years of ploughing, Ling Howe Long Barrow, west of the village, remains visible. In fields to its north stands the 60ft-plus Ella Hill round barrow, which is thought could date from 2400BC.

Little evidence, barring three lodge cottages and housing for staff, remains of another construction which shaped the community, despite being outside the village’s boundary.

Opened to house “pauper lunatics” as The East Riding Asylum in 1871 and renamed the East Riding Mental Hospital in a bid to dissociate itself from the "grim reputation of Victorian times", was later changed it eventually became known as Broadgate Hospital before it was closed in 1989.