LARKIN'S ELSEWHERE
WEST TO EAST
Elsewhere, this Larkin journey is no longer linear and visits several significant locations peppered around the East Riding. Six miles from Cottingham lies another suburban village, Hessle, former home of Larkin”s first publishers, George and Jean Hartley. A short distance away, Hessle Foreshore stretches along the banks of the broad Humber, dominated by the suspended “giant step” of the Humber Bridge. Beyond, inland and further to the west, amongst the “thin and thistled” fields around the Humber estuary, lie the quiet villages where Larkin loved to cycle. From one of these villages, Broomfleet, the trail stops off at the delightful market town of Beverley, as Larkin liked to do when returning home on his bicycle. To the east of Hull the trail heads out across the ever-lonelier Holderness Plain, where “silence stands / Like heat,” calling at Patrington to admire its exquisite church. Finally, the trail enters the dunes and grasses of Spurn Point, a remote spit of land curving into the North Sea, where “Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach / Of shapes and shingle.”
253 Hull Road Hessle
253 Hull Road Hessle
The small terraced house at 253 Hull Road was one of the most significant in Larkin’s life, as it was the home of George and Jean Hartley, the publishers of the collection that made his name, The Less Deceived.
The Hartleys, barely in their 20s at the time, had included some of Larkin’s poems in early issues of their magazine, Listen. They then wrote to him in Belfast, asking whether he had enough poems to form a collection, as they were inaugurating a new imprint, the Marvell Press. Larkin sent them what later became The Less Deceived, round about the same time that he accepted the post of Librarian at the University of Hull. The rest, as they say, is history.
The Less Deceived, published in 1955, established Larkin’s reputation as a poet and the Hartleys as publishers. Larkin’s association with them was not only on a professional level: he became a friend and regular visitor. When the Hartleys divorced in 1970 and George moved to London, Larkin maintained his friendship with Jean, which she has documented in her autobiography, Philip Larkin, The Marvell Press and Me (Sumach Press).
The small house where it all began, half a mile from the centre of Hessle, still sits quietly in its terrace, although subsequent tenants have altered the Victorian bay window and the front door (please respect that this is a private residence).
Jean Hartley, co-founder of the Marvell Press- her original publication, Philip Larkin’s Hull and East Yorkshire, was the inspiration for the Larkin Trail.
Location
253 Hull Road, Hessle
HU13 9NP
The sign can be found on the garden wall of number 253 Hull Road (please respect that this is a private residence).
The Humber Bridge
The Humber Bridge
To Anthony Hedges – 15 December 1975 (Bridge for the Living)
‘The first part describes Hull’s essential loneliness, and is descriptive and slow moving, the second tries to feel cheerful about the ending of this loneliness through the agency of the bridge, and I suppose could be called celebratory’
During his visits to George and Jean Hartley in Hull Road, Larkin would often accompany them on a walk with their children, down to Hessle Haven and along the shingly foreshore. Here, standing ‘where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet’, you can see how Larkin captured Hull’s comparative isolation.
When Larkin wrote this description, as part of ‘The Whitsun Weddings’, that sense of ‘standing apart’ was much stronger, as it was before the advent of the Humber Bridge and its accompanying country parks. This iconic structure negated the need for the ferry trip over the river that Larkin so enjoyed. Nevertheless, he agreed to write the words for Anthony Hedges’ cantata, ‘Bridge for the Living’, to mark the bridge’s opening in 1981.
Today, the Humber Bridge links the two counties by car in a matter of minutes. It is also possible to use its walkways to enjoy the breadth of the Humber at a much slower, more contemplative pace.
Anthony Hedges Bridge for the Living, with words by Larkin, was performed in 2010 as part of a celebratory concert by Hull University Orchestra and Hull University Choir.
The Humber Bridge.
Larkin at the foreshore.
Location
The Humber Bridge, Hessle HU13 0HB
The sign can be found on the north tower of the Humber Bridge at the level of the east path of the pedestrian walkway. Access on foot, by bicycle and wheelchair, is from the Humber Bridge Country Park car park.
Blacktoft
Blacktoft
Blacktoft, situated just beyond the Humber Estuary on the banks of the River Ouse, is half an hour or so west of Hull, and is one of several villages in this area that Larkin used to visit when out on his bike. He would often think nothing of cycling 30 miles or so, leaving the ‘mortgaged, half-built edges’ of Hull behind to wind his way along the many quiet lanes around Blacktoft, Broomfleet and Crabley Creek.
Here the fields are known as carrs, from the Scandinavian ‘kjarr’ meaning marsh overgrown with brushwood, and they impressed Larkin with their remoteness, drawn as he always was to ‘the fields too thin and thistled to be called meadows’. In a letter to Monica Jones dated 8 June 1969 Larkin describes a magical meandering visit to the area, richly describing the glories of early summer and bitterly regretting that he had left his camera at home.
Although Blacktoft is a remote village, a pier was constructed here, proving invaluable to shipping when the tide has not enough depth for vessels to reach Goole or Hull. Blacktoft Jetty is barely touched by rail or road, yet has a solitary inn called the Hope and Anchor.
Larkin’s love of photography is evidenced by the wealth of images he took on his regular cycling trips across East Yorkshire. His interest in photographs also informed much of his poetry.
Location
Blacktoft
Goole
DN14 7YW
The sign can be found on the gable end wall of the Old School House.
Beverley
Beverley
“I usually pedal miles and miles at the weekend, always winding up in the Beverley Arms for tea.”
Beverley is a busy, ancient market town, dominated by the majestic Minster. It takes its name from ‘beaver leah or lac’ and in the fourteenth century was the tenth largest town in England.
After his cycling expeditions around East Yorkshire, Larkin would often stop for tea at The Beverley Arms Hotel opposite the beautiful St Mary’s Church. The Beverley Arms was formerly the Blue Bell Inn, but was rebuilt in the 1790s (William Middleton) as the town’s major coaching inn. The town’s coat of arms, a beaver above water, is still visible. According to Maeve Brennan, Larkin’s Hull muse, the Beverley Arms was ‘our favourite place’ where their friendship ‘entered a new and headier phase’. It was also the place to which, in 1959, Larkin, in a fit of generosity, invited twelve or so junior library staff to dinner to say thanks for the work they had done in making sure that the newly extended University library was successful.
Close by the Beverley Arms you can see North Bar, part of the town’s ancient walls. Beyond the archway, round to your left, lies Beverley Westwood, a large green undulating common, grazed by free-roaming cattle. The Westwood lies opposite Beverley Racecourse, which is equally popular with locals and visitors alike.
Beverley Arms
Location
Beverley Arms Hotel
25 North Bar Within
Beverley HU17 8DD
The sign can be found on the front of the hotel to right of entrance.
Patrington & the
Holderness Plains
Patrington & the
Holderness Plains
Heading east out of Hull along the A1033, you gradually enter Holderness Plain, a wide expanse of arable fields, big skies and ever-lonelier roads. In the village of Patrington, about 14 miles east of the city, stands the beautiful church of St Patrick’s, often described as the Queen of Holderness (nearby Hedon being her King).
St Patrick’s was largely built between 1310-1349 and is regarded as one of the finest parish churches in the country. John Betjeman wrote:
‘There is no doubt that, inside and out, the parish church of Patrington is one of the great buildings of England. It sails like a galleon of stone over the wide, flat expanse of Holderness, its symmetry and many pinnacles lead the eye up to its perfectly proportioned spire which crowns the central tower’.
Larkin often passed this way when cycling further and further out around Holderness, soaking up Cherry Cob Sands, Stone Creek, Skeffling and Sunk Island, where the ‘leaves unnoticed thicken, hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken’.
St Patrick’s Church, Patrington.
The town of Hedon, on the way from Hull to Patrington.
Patrington Market Place.
Location
Patrington
East Yorkshire
HU12 0ND
The sign is located on the wall of the car park near to lych gate.
Spurn Point
Spurn Point
Spurn Lighthouse
Spurn Point (also referred to as Spurn Head) is a remarkable place, formed by longshore drift, with sand and shingle washed southwards down the coast from cliffs battered by the North Sea. Larkin’s poem ‘Here’ depicts a sweeping journey from Hull across to Spurn.
… past the poppies bluish neutral distance Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach Of shapes and shingle
The lighthouse is no longer in use but remains an impressive structure, pinned to this long sandy spit that stretches over three miles out into the Humber Estuary. Spurn is protected by the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and this unique coastal reserve draws birdwatchers and other nature-lovers from miles around. Please note that no dogs are allowed at this location. Whatever the weather, visitors are drawn to its shifting dunes, the force of the sea and its ever-changing skies.
Larkin, who found Spurn’s remoteness equally magnetic, often cycled out here. He summed it up in his famous foreword to A Rumoured City: ‘Behind Hull is the plain of Holderness, lonelier and lonelier, and after that the birds and lights of Spurn Head, and then the sea’.
Aerial Spurn image by David Nichols
Location
Spurn Point, East Yorkshire HU12 0UH
The sign is located on the battery wall by car park at end of the Point.
