Into the picture podcast: Sewerby Village

The village of Sewerby is an ancient one. The name, Sewerby, means settlement or village of Siward. This is a Scandinavian name and it may refer to Siward, the 11th century, Viking Earl of Northumbria. Despite giving it his name, Siward was unlikely to be the founder of Sewerby. Anglian burials on the clifftop show that there was early English occupation in the area, and the presence of Roman remains may suggest an even older origin.

By the 12th century the manor was held by members of the de Sywardby family, who took their name from the village. On the death of William de Sywardby in 1450 the village passed through several hands before coming into the ownership of John Carliell in 1567. It was John’s successor, Elizabeth Carliell and her son Henry who sold the village, along with the manor house, to John Greame in 1714.

Since the 1850s the village has terminated at the gatehouse to the Sewerby Hall estate. The gatehouse and lodges were built as part of a programme of works that saw the environs of Sewerby Hall imparked and enclosed by the brick wall that still runs along Church Lane. The construction of this gate house and wall around the estate was a watershed event in the history of Sewerby. Not only did the wall create a physical barrier that separated the manor house from the village, it also involved the reshaping of the village itself. Prior to the imparking of the estate, Sewerby village extended past the site of the gatehouse along the line of the drive and then north to finish somewhere in the region of the modern car park. The road then continued eastward round the front of the Hall where there may once have been even more houses. When the estate was sold to John Greame in 1714 in addition to the manor house the sale included a house and close in its yard and the site of ten former cottages. These may have been removed as part of an earlier Georgian landscaping scheme around the house.

It is not clear when the last of the houses inside the estate boundary were removed, but they had gone by 1854 when the first Ordnance Survey map of the area was produced. Their demolition may well have coincided with the construction, around this time, of Castle Garth, a small terrace behind Main Street which provided alternative housing for some of the displaced villagers.
Today there is little trace of the village within the estate boundary. However there is one reminder. At the southern end of the car park is a small circular building with a conical roof. This attractive 19th century structure caps the well that supplied this part of the village with water. This well, along with another in village, both owned by the Greame family, were Sewerby’s only water supply and the sight of residents carting buckets of water home was common until the mid-1920s when the water main was extend from Bridlington, bringing fresh water on tap and an end to this last link with this vanished part of Sewerby village.